Barely a day goes by anymore without you seeing some video of a bizarre, new Kinect PC hack on your video gaming news website of choice. Put the tech out there and the homebrew crowd will go to town on it, that's just the way of things. It looks now as though at some point down the road making the Kinect play nice with your computer will be made easier thanks to planned PC support from Microsoft.
Speaking to the BBC at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hinted that such support for the Kinect is very much in the cards. It's all part of the company's larger plan.
"Well we certainly started out on Xbox and we're very focused in on gaming," he said. "We're the number one game console in a lot of countries and we're very happy about that. We're trying to do two major things though. We're trying to move beyond gaming to include the world of socialization -- movies, TV and music -- and we're trying to make the whole experience accessible to everybody in the family, not just the traditional gamer."
And that's when things get interesting. The BBC interviewer asks Ballmer point-blank about the prospect of seeing formalized PC support for the Kinect. He stumbles over his words a bit as he replies, probably trying to come up with a PR-friendly on-the-spot response without revealing too much. "We'll support that in a formal way in the right time, and when we have an announcement to make we'll make it."
Sly, Ballmer. Very sly. You can't hide the truth from us though. Of course Kinect PC support is coming. Look at how popular these hacks are. Official Windows support means more opportunities to make money. After all, people are clearly interested. Who knows when we'll see it though. Frankly, I'd like to see Kinect games find their footing before the device branches out in other directions.