Kinect commercial SDK announced, motion-based apps aren’t far behind

While the Kinect was originally set to be a living room rival to the Wii, the hacker community took advantage of the relatively inexpensive motion sensor to deliver interesting results. Microsoft recognized their efforts earlier this year by releasing an official SDK for enthusiasts and academic institutions to allow them to write apps for the device. Seemingly impressed with what people have been able to do with the Kinect, the company today announced that businesses will soon be able to join the party with a full commercial SDK, set to be released early next year. That means that firms such as Toyota, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Razorfish — three of the companies mentioned by Microsoft — can now sell Kinect apps or make ones for their businesses. We’ve seen what banking on the Kinect would look like, but with 200 firms already signed on, motion controls are set to take over every facet of our lives, finally allowing us to live out those geeky Minority Report fantasies.