Kinect: Microsoft keen for laptop, tablet integration but faces technical challenges

Microsoft eventually wants its Kinect sensor in all sorts of different devices, but has to overcome a number of hurdles.

The company's plans were outed by senior adviser to the CEO Craig Mundie during Microsoft's TechForum in Seattle, as reported by The Verge.

"You want to be as cheap as possible and physically as small as possible. My dream is to get a Kinect into the bezel of something like this [Surface tablet]," Mundie said.

The executive said Microsoft wants to get the sensor into laptops, for example.

"It's not gonna happen tomorrow, but we can see a path towards that sort of thing," he said.

But as well as making the camera small and cheap enough to make this practical, Microsoft has to overcome a number of challenges.

"It turns out it's infrared so when you go out in the sunlight the sun is a big infrared source that drowns it out," Mundie said.

"There's a whole bunch of problems, not just miniaturisation, in designing the sensors so they actually do what you expect them to do in all of the environments."

The latest Kinect rumour is that an improved version will ship with Microsoft's next console, which is yet to be announced, and possibly be required for the hardware to function.

Thanks, Shack.