Microsoft Pretends They Were Down With Kinect Hacking All Along

Surely you’ve seen your share of Kinect hacks in the last little while – hell, even last week I posted a couple here on Techi. Microsoft was originally not down with this, and implied potential legal action against anyone modifying their device.

But it seems they’ve now had a change of heart, claming Kinect was always ‘open by design’, and that they’re happy to have folks write all sorts of drivers for all manner of Kinect-based ballyhoo. “What has happened,” says Microsoft’s Alex Kipman to NPR, “is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn’t protect by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor.” Emphasis definitely mine.

So what’s the deal then, Microsoft? Did you recognize a good publicity opportunity when you saw it? I guess, in the long run, we shouldn’t ask questions – they’re on our side now, and we (read: you) are free to make the Kinect dance and sing however you like. That’s so rad, I’m gonna show you a guy with a Kinect lightsaber.

Bam.