That's certainly a turnaround from their .

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According to Microsoft, it's part of their research wing's strategy to embrace application developers by "[making] it easier for academic research and enthusiast communities to create even richer experiences using Kinect technology."

Surprised? Don't be. Steve Ballmer's long maintained the company planned to get in front of Kinect for Windows.

Call it Kinect for Windows SDK, because Microsoft is, and it's coming from (IEB) and Microsoft Research (MSR), the company's R&D subdivision "dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering."