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Xbox One Kinect won't work with PCs

Brenna Hillier avatar
News by Brenna Hillier Contributor
Published on

Unlike the Xbox 360 version, the Xbox One's Kinect won't work with your PC.

The current Kinect has a proprietary connector but comes with an adapter allowing it to be plugged into a USB port on a PC; in a statement provided to Ars Technica, a Microsoft representative said this isn't the case for the new camera motion controller, which will instead come in two platform-specific varieties.

"The Kinect for Xbox One sensor will not have an adapter that allows it to plug into a computer. The new generation Kinect for Windows sensor will connect to computers using a standard USB3 port," the spokesperson said.

The two different Kinects will have similar capabilities but will apparently not be compatible with each other.

"The new generation Kinect for Windows sensor will be a fully tested, licensed, and supported Kinect experience on Windows. Kinect for Xbox One is being built for and tested with the Xbox One," Microsoft said.

It will be interesting to see if homebrew developers find some way to circumvent this restriction.

Even before Microsoft released a Windows SDK for Kinect, hackers were doing all sorts of cool things with it - so much so that everyone eventually got bored of reporting on them.

Thanks, CVG.

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