In the world of Xbox 360 shooters there’s Gears of War and then there’s everything else. Some may argue that Halo is the superior shooter, but fans of Quake, Duke Nukem and Doom, know all too well that Gears is where the action’s at. At next week’s Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, the Redmond camp is expected to unveil Gears of War Kinect and possibly a Windows 7 Kinect SDK.
According to Microsoft’s Larry Hybrd “cool news” is coming next week in San Francisco, where Microsoft will hold an invite-only press event, promising we’ll be, “really happy when [we] hear all the news”. The event will be part of GDC and should set the stage for the second wave of Kinect titles scheduled for April. One of those titles is rumored to be Gears of War Kinect. If this rumors proves accurate, Microsoft will have no problem doubling the eight million Kinect sensors sold in the first 60 days.
In related news, Microsoft has confirmed plans to roll out an official Kinect SDK. After the dozens of unofficial Kinect hacks being demonstrated across the web, the company decided a Windows-based Kinect SDK was the smart play. Microsoft’s Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s interactive business division, said the Windows Kinect SDK will ship in the Spring. This news was later confirmed on the the Microsoft next blog
“The hope is that the SDK will unleash a wave of creativity to add to the already exciting developments we’ve seen on top of Kinect. The SDK will provide access to Kinect’s sensor as well audio and system API’s. It’s being released by Microsoft Research as a non-commercial SDK aimed at academics and enthusiasts. As you may have read in earlier posts, MSR played a pivotal role by providing some of the core technology for Kinect in areas such as facial recognition and skeletal tracking and this SDK is more evidence of the tight collaboration between MSR and our product teams.”
2011 looks to be the year of Microsoft Kinect. If the software giant delivers with Gears of War Kinect and several other key titles, combined with Windows Kinect SDK, the shelf life of the XBox franchise looks very promising.
For those of you who have not purchased the Kinect, who plans to buy the sensor if Microsoft releases Gears of War Kinect?
via WinRumors
