Life after Kinect: PrimeSense's plans for a post-Microsoft future
When PrimeSense founder Aviad Maizels put a prototype of a 3D sensor on a chip in front of Microsoft in 2006, he had no idea it would lead to the biggest turning point in the Israeli startup's history.
Context & Ripple Effects
PrimeSense's history runs through one customer: founder Aviad Maizels showed Microsoft a prototype 3D sensor-on-a-chip back in 2006, and that chip became the heart of Kinect — a story with a near-miss twist, since Apple came close to landing the sensor deal first before Microsoft took it. By 2011, Kinect and its offspring were being framed as central to Microsoft's own future, making the startup's fortunes look inseparable from the Xbox.
That dependence is exactly what this piece reverses: PrimeSense is now explicitly planning a strategy for life after the Kinect relationship, just as Microsoft itself heads into a reported reorganization — Ballmer is rumored to unveil restructuring plans to senior executives by July 1. A supplier built on a single flagship platform choosing to diversify, while that platform's owner reshuffles, is the signal worth watching.
First-order effects
- PrimeSense's revenue base stops being tied to the Xbox hardware cycle: the company can sell its depth-sensing chips to any device maker rather than routing everything through one Redmond relationship.
- Microsoft loses a measure of exclusivity over the technology behind Kinect — if PrimeSense courts other customers, the differentiating hardware of Microsoft's flagship input device becomes available to rivals.
Second-order effects
- TV, PC, and mobile makers gain an off-the-shelf path to gesture control without negotiating with Microsoft, pressuring whoever else sells motion-sensing reference designs to compete on price and integration.
- The rumored July restructuring at Microsoft will set how much strategic weight Kinect carries post-reorg — a demoted Kinect weakens Microsoft's pull on PrimeSense further; a promoted one raises the stakes of the split.
Third-order effects
- If PrimeSense succeeds in decoupling from Kinect, 3D sensing completes its shift from a console peripheral to a generic component — the same pattern that turned touchscreens from a phone feature into commodity silicon.
- Supplier concentration around single-platform partners becomes a live risk model for hardware startups: the PrimeSense arc argues for multi-customer strategies before the anchor customer forces the issue.
The trend: Depth-sensing hardware is migrating from a single-console attachment toward general-purpose machine-perception components sold across the device industry.