Kinect for Windows 1.5 arriving in May

Yesterday Microsoft revealed some interesting details about its plans for Kinect for Windows. According to an official blog post, Kinect for Windows will be launching in 19 more countries in the coming months – folks in Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, India, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the UAE will be able to buy the motion control accessory locally.

In addition to increased availability of the device, Microsoft will also be pushing out version 1.5 of the Kinect for Windows software. The new version of Kinect for Windows will come with Kinect Studio – an app that lets developers record, playback and debug clips of users engaging with their apps. Another feature arriving is “seated” or “10-join” skeletal tracking which lets the Kinect track the head, neck and arms of either a seated or standing user in both default and near mode.

New languages (French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese) will be added for speech recognition, and new language packs for the way a language is spoken in different regions will also e released. More details about Kinect for Windows 1.5 will be released in the future, but we can expect it to arrive at the end of May.

George Wong
Categories: Gaming
Tags: Kinect, Microsoft, Windows