After earlier this month announcing they were working with law enforcement to keep the Kinect for Xbox 360 tamper-proof, Microsoft now says this only relates to malicious use of internal Xbox algorithms, and not the inventive and well-publicised meddling which has captured the imagination of the internet since the Kinect’s November 4 release. In fact, Microsoft now says they left Kinect open to tampering on purpose:
“What has happened is someone wrote a open source driver for PCs, which essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn’t protect by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor.”
Director of Incubation for Xbox, Alex Kipman
Kipman added that fan hackers would not be penalised with legal action by Microsoft.
Which is good news for those after the $3,000 bounty up for grabs from the open source community for the fastest person to create an open source driver, and Google engineer, Matt Cutts’ $2,000 reward for the “coolest” hacks for the Kinect.
Check out this YouTube video by KinectHacks which shows how the Kinect can be used to create 3D images at home.
Brace yourself for some seriously high-tech Avatar fanfic in the months to come…
Loving the possibilities of this. So far this is my fave:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3EeJCln5KYg