Next-Gen Kinect Rumors

Hey there guys! There are new job listings popping up that indicate that Microsoft might be really amping the development for their next-gen Kinect. For example this is a section from a job listing for a software development engineer, "the team that shipped Kinect for Xbox 360" is seeking a candidate to work on "the future of Natural User Input."

The same job listing later states, "The Xbox Platform Team is gearing up towards the next generation of Natural User Interface (NUI) technologies." The job description also mentioned "rapid prototyping" and as a requirement "successful candidate must be able to come up to speed with new technologies".

Also in a different job listing for a senior electronic engineer this was mentioned, "[looking for candidate responsible] for designing, building and delivering the devices and the innovative solution for Xbox and various future NUI applications." It also included Microsoft's mission statement which stated, "[to] re-invent entertainment, led from the living room, powered by the cloud, across multiple screens and best experienced on our devices."

These listings that started appearing between end of June and beginning of July match with previous rumors regarding the improved Kinect sensor being developed by Microsoft. Only recently a Microsoft patent was discovered which described the new Kinect would be able to capture depth via infrared light "to determine a physical distance from the capture device to a particular location on the targets or objects in the scene." Other rumors suggest that the new Kinect might be precise enough to even read lips!

I wonder how far the development of the next-gen Xbox and Kinect has gone considering the fact that the recently leaked photos of the next-gen Xbox development kit showed the option to go to NuiVIew, which according to Digital Foundry is "a simple tool for rendering camera views and data from an attached Kinect Peripheral."

Blog Written by Shahriar Azad