If you’ve got a crazy ingenious idea for Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral, but don’t have the means to make your dream a reality, the Kinect Accelerator just might be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.
Microsoft, having performed a complete 180-degree turnaround from their initial stance on Kinect hacking, is embracing developers more than ever with this new program. They are offering a $20,000 along with development space to ten startup companies, in hopes of turning out some incredible Kinect applications. At the end of the three month program, each group will have the opportunity to present their creations to a group of angel investors, which is a fantastic opportunity.
Obviously competition to gain entry into the program will be pretty fierce, but if you think you have what it takes, get your application in now. Judging by the Kinect Accelerator FAQ section, this looks to be something geared towards small tech startups rather than individuals, but it never hurts to give it a shot.
20k seems kind of low for a whole team of people.
It’s a hell of a lot more than nothing though. And that’s not counting the truly valuable things like getting access to all the tools they might like, free office space, free education and support from mentors. And to top it off they get help to present their ideas to potential investors. I’d say it’s a damn good deal.
part of the deal is you let m$ patent your “innovations”
But it includes the cost of living in Seattle for the whole team. that’s barely enough to keep 5 people alive and housed for 3 months there.
Yeah, you’re right. Microsoft shouldn’t give anything away instead, that’d be better.
Seriously, it’s incredible how much shit Microsoft gets.
They give away free shit; it’s not enough.
They don’t give away stuff; cheap bastards.
They decide to jump into the modding of the Kinect; after thought, they should’ve done it from the start.
They don’t support modders; omg why don’t they see how it would help them sell stuff.
No matter what they do it’s never good enough.
Sneekypoo,
Are we talking about the same Microsoft?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
kinda funny how microsoft started out like atari to third party developers, and has ended up like nintendo to the same third party developers……..god i’m a nerd XP still, will be interesting to see what comes of this. lets hope its something cool ^^
It’s nice to see some folks at MS have embraced their nice kinect developers instead of doing the sony and dropping a deuce on them.
We saw how that turned out for sony though. LuLz
Sony hasnt learned. They just announced today that you can’t share your disc between more than 2 consoles. So if you have 3 or have two friends to swap around with, you are screwed. Sony is always looking for ways to screw themselves.
@HackTheGibson
There is no unique serial number built in to mass produced BluRay disks.
That is only for Sony Play Station Network. it was 5 consoles and is now 2, so if your console dies you can transfer your games from the old to the new. But if it dies again, then Sony will fight you, not that they don’t do anythingelse to non sheep users. Anyhow with the amount of inherent data collection (spying) and trending built in to the PSN, who would use it. Well apart from kids who know no better. Privacy and online multi-player console gaming are incompatible. In the eyes of the law Sony is equal to one human being, if any adult attempted to collect as much data about kids as Sony does, they would be in jail long ago and the key thrown away.
they dont care for linux or mac though, all winblows stuff.
Gee, I wonder why?
Then it will be Open source! The horrer!
Also, i remember back when the OPEN SOURCE AND FREE kinect drivers came out… people were doing all sorts of cool stuff. Even kinect on android. Now ms comes out and is like “omg we are so nice giving you dis”
What is this Windoze you speak of ?