With only three more days until Kinect is launched in North America, Microsoft has confirmed it has Canesta, an eleven-year old firm dedicated to the development gesture-recognition technologies. With the acquisition of this company, and the 40 patents owned by it, Microsoft has substantially increased its foothold in the sector, making it more difficult for competitors to duplicate the technology on which Kinect is based.
It is currently unclear whether technology owned by Canesta was already implemented in the Kinect technology, or if this acquisition is purely focused on improving the technology in the future. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated that the company is currently looking to push the gesture-recognition technology beyond the Xbox 360.