How Kinect and its offspring are shaping the future of Microsoft
Gee-whiz conceptual demos of “natural user interfaces” are a longstanding tradition at Microsoft, but the early success of the Kinect motion controller for Xbox 360 has given these projects new energy, demonstrating their potential to impact the company and the world.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft Research's natural-user-interface work has been a demo tradition for years, but the Kinect hacking wave that produced mind-bending 3D video effects last November turned the Xbox 360 motion controller into proof that these interfaces can ship and spread. This TechFlash piece frames Kinect's early commercial success as internal validation: the conceptual demos — Windows Phones controlling Surfaces, gesture-driven desktops, Kinect-as-musical-instrument per Engadget and The Next Web pickups — now read as previews rather than science projects.
The timing matters inside Microsoft's portfolio: Windows Phone 7 shipped in October 2010 to largely positive reviews yet has hit significant setbacks, so a differentiated interaction model beyond the touchscreen is one of the few vectors where the company holds an unambiguous win. Employee moonlighting projects like the Bubblegum smartphone app show the same experimental energy bubbling below the product line.
First-order effects
- Kinect's sales momentum hands Microsoft Research real leverage inside the company — NUI projects move from curiosity demos to candidates for productization across Xbox, Surface, and Windows Phone.
- The enthusiast developer community building on open Kinect hacks (3D video, music) extends the device's footprint far beyond gaming at zero cost to Microsoft's own R&D budget.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in consoles and consumer hardware face pressure to answer gesture and voice input with their own sensor stacks, turning natural interfaces from differentiator into table stakes.
- If Microsoft ports Kinect-style interaction to Windows Phone 7, it offers a counter-narrative to the platform's setbacks — selling developers an interface advantage iOS and Android don't have.
Third-order effects
- Sensor-driven interfaces are positioned to become a cross-product platform layer at Microsoft rather than a peripheral feature — one sensing technology amortized across entertainment, computing, and mobile.
- A successful NUI platform shifts competitive dynamics in consumer tech from spec-sheet parity toward who owns the interaction model, with privacy questions around always-on cameras and microphones likely to follow any mainstream adoption.
The trend: Motion-sensing is evolving from a console accessory into a general-purpose interface layer that hardware platforms compete to embed across their product lines.