YEAH! Kinect for Windows will be available on February 1st, 2012 in 12 countries (United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom), at a suggested retail price of US $249. Microsoft shares with us that “Kinect for Windows hardware will be available, in limited quantities at first, through a variety of resellers and distributors.”

Luckily, “the price includes a one-year warranty, access to ongoing software updates for both speech and human tracking, and continued investment in Kinect for Windows-based software advancements.”  Later this year, Microsoft reports on their Kinect for Windows blog, they “will offer special academic pricing (planned at US $149) for Qualified Educational Users.”

Near Mode

With Kinect for Windows, Microsoft is investing in creating a platform that is optimized for scenarios beyond the living room, and delivering new software features on an ongoing basis, starting with “near mode”, which MS explains as:

Of particular interest to developers will be the new firmware which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device without losing accuracy or precision, with graceful degradation down to 40 centimeters.  “Near Mode” will enable a whole new class of “close up” applications, beyond the living room scenarios for Kinect for Xbox 360.

This is what will make the hardware of this new Kinect sensor different from the Xbox 360 version.

A new platform

We are excited for the new possibilities that Kinect will enable on the Windows platform, and to see how businesses and developers reimagine their processes and their products, and the many different ways each Kinect could enrich lives and make using technology more natural for everyone.

For a long and interesting read on Microsoft’s vision and ideas with Windows and Kinect, checkout this blog post.

Microsoft elaborating on Kinect for Windows kinect for windows ces 2012