Kinect & Windows 8: Microsoft’s forgotten love story

I had a thought on the commute into work this morning. If Windows 8 is geared towards touch screens, and the biggest user backlash is from desktop users – you know, the ones without touchscreens – why not integrate another way to interact with Metro**?

What technology does Microsoft have that can interact in another way? Kinect.

That’s when I realized Microsoft is missing out on a huge opportunity here. Metro may be cumbersome to navigate with a mouse (resulting in a lot of scrolling), but why not give users a better way to interact, without having to invest a large amount of money in a touch screen? Let users grab and drag across applications. Let them open and navigate through Metro apps with their hands. It’ll feel a bit like Minority Report, but it sure beats dragging through them with a mouse.

Techcrunch talked a few months back about Windows 8’s secret weapon: Kinect in laptops, and I agree. Build in the technology and users will love it. Show them how much easier it is to use instead of a keyboard and mouse.

Right now, if you plug a Kinect for Windows device into a Windows 8 PC, you can’t do much. Maybe Microsoft’s got it disabled for now and plans to show it off to the world once it’s released to the public in October (this seems unlikely). Some sort of integration has been tested, but up until now, Microsoft hasn’t talked about it in public.

In it’s current state, Windows RT doesn’t support Kinect at all, the devices will need to get much smaller (to sit on top of a screen, or be built into a screen) and there is actually no native support yet for interaction using the devices (thus why when you plug in the device you can’t control Windows straight off the bat).

We’ve seen Windows 8 in it’s final form already, and Kinect isn’t there. Will Microsoft add it later? I hope so. It could convert a whole bunch of sceptical users who don’t have a ‘Modern’ way of interacting with their PC’s to Windows 8. If not, it’s a huge missed opportunity for the company, especially considering how well the devices have done for the Xbox.

** - I’m aware Microsoft is not calling “Metro” by that name anymore, but I’m going to continue using it anyway.