XNA getting Kinect support “In the near future”

Alex Kipman, Director of Incubation for Xbox at Microsoft (yes, that’s a real position), recently stated during an interview on NRP’s Talk of the Nation that “There’s no Kinect support through XNA today, but that is something that we will support in the future.” This comes to much of a surprise to indie developers who have been urging for support on the platform. Dave Mitchell, an XNA founding member, revealed earlier this month on the App Hub (XNA) forums that Microsoft was evaluating adding XNA Kinect API support in future updates.

Despite not offering tools at the moment, a number of interesting hacks have been put together, for example, putting a true 3D camera together using open source drivers. While no formal hacks have been made at the moment, Microsoft claims that users have been able to “open the USB connection, which we didn’t protect by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor.”

This could prove to be a major vaulting point on a platform which is currently lacking strong support from Microsoft. XNA is a community which thrives from user creativity, much like the Kinect. A combination of the two forces could lead the way for pioneering movements within game development.

Source: NPR

By Dave Voyles at November 24, 2010.

About Dave Voyles

Dave is based out of Long Island, NY and is currently working on projects using the Unreal Engine. He earned his degree in Communications from SUNY Oneonta and currently doing his MBA in Management of Information Systems. Dave is also Co-Coordinator for the Indie Games Summer Uprising on Xbox Live. You can follow him on Twitter, at @DaveVoyles