Microsoft To Back Kinect-Based Startups

angry tapir writes "Microsoft has announced a program designed to help 10 developers or startups launch businesses around products for Kinect, the controller that senses motion and voice. Developers with Kinect applications for the Xbox or Windows are invited to apply to the Kinect Accelerator program, even though Microsoft does not yet allow the sale of products based on Kinect for Windows."

Yay

[masternerdguy]

Oh goodie, more motion control games. A good control scheme should minimize the amount of movement required for me to interface with the game.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

A good control scheme allows the player to have fun playing the game. Go back to your cave.

Re:Rip-off central

[Fluffeh]

While I also think that this is a bit rough, it may be within the bounds of acceptable for some start-ups. I can imagine that normally VC companies would take a bigger slice of the pie then 6%, but I am also thinking that the 6% is really just the ticket inside the door. If in order to get more money you have to sacrifice more of your stock, then this becomes less and less appealing - even to a one or two man startup with an idea for a cool use.

The article does come up with a few very interesting apps that are out there - such as giving a doctor the ability to view different x-ray images without having to touch anything. I can imagine that this sort of thing would be VERY useful to an operating room where the doctors aren't supposed to touch anything after they have scrubbed down.

Re:Rip-off central

[nmb3000]

The article does come up with a few very interesting apps that are out there - such as giving a doctor the ability to view different x-ray images without having to touch anything. I can imagine that this sort of thing would be VERY useful to an operating room where the doctors aren't supposed to touch anything after they have scrubbed down.

Wow, that's the first time I've heard of anything a gesture-based (i.e. Minority Report) interface would be good for. Allowing a surgeon to manipulate an image display without touching anything is just cool.

As to the costs of joining the program (moving to Seattle, 6% cut, etc), it might be worth it if you get to have face-to-face contact with the engineers and developers of the Kinect SDK. Having the engineering team right there listening to comments, complaints, and suggestions to improve and modify the SDK would be very helpful.

Re:I don't know, in my experience with Kinect..

[Hentes]

It seems to me that you have problems with the official software and not the hardware itself. And the official software was optimised for gaming, not for nerds at home hacking the device.

Re:Rip-off central

[tomhudson]

The relocating for 3 months is a deal-breaker for ANY small team. They'll be losing money b the time they pay for air fare there and back, meals, rooms, car rental, cost or moving all your equipment (computers, screens, big-screen TVs, consoles) both ways, rental of a secure site, work tables, chairs, (what - you were going to just let them "offer" you a convenient place to work out of that they have the keys to? Are you retarded????) etc.

So - they're out of pocket AND give up 6% for the "privilege" of doing what they can do w/o relocating and being out of pocket.

Re:Rip-off central

[0123456]

startups are risky at the best of times and good guidence and training is invaluable.

Here's two useful pieces of guidance which have been well proven through the years:

1. Never start a land war in Asia.
2. Never get into a 'partnership' with Microsoft.

Fool me once ... fool me twice ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Well, back in 1990s developers fell over themselves to develop applications for the new fangled thingie called MS-DOS. They had a slew of killer products. Lotus-123! Harvard Business Graphics. Word Perfect. dBase III. One by one Microsoft also entered into the same market segment and used its control over the platform to screw the developers and bankrupted them. They were fooled once.

Then came Mark Andreeson. He thought, "may be if I give my product, the browser, away for free and try to make money by selling tools to create the web browser, may be I can survive". But Microsoft priced its browser below zero and killed his company. The developers were aghast. But they were fretting and fuming but could not do anything about it. Microsoft can just issue a press release saying, "We are thinking of doing XYZ" and the venture capital for startups trying to develop apps that do XYZ vanish like a curl of smoke. They were fooled many times more than once.

Now, with a plethora of systems available, from Android to iOS to linux to simple plain HTML you think developers would trust Microsoft as far as Ballmer can throw a chair? No way buddy. No way.

Re:They want to steal your ideas

[oakgrove]

So MS gets to see everything you have before they hand you off to some other company. The company that has been caught red handed filing patents on other people's ideas gets to see the cream of the idea crop for kinect development then they get to just stew on it. Based on their obvious propensity for dishonesty, they are almost certainly going to be poring over everything you've shown them searching for any little thing they can use to exploit. No fucking thanks.