Apple has confirmed its acquisition of Israeli 3D body sensing firm PrimeSense, reports AllThingsD. The move comes after months of speculation, as Apple was first reported in July to be looking to acquire the firm behind the original 3D body sensing technology used by Microsoft for its Kinect platform. The negotiations gained notoriety again earlier this month as Apple was said to be on the verge of a deal, agreeing to purchase PrimeSense for approximately $345 million, but was held up due to a final legal issue.
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Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet confirmed the PrimeSense deal with the boilerplate comment the company typically provides when news of one of its acquisitions leaks: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”
The report also notes that while PrimeSense became known for developing Microsoft's first-generation Kinect sensor, Microsoft has since deployed its own homegrown sensor technology for the current generation Kinect, which currently ships with the Xbox One.
Apple has expressed interest in Kinect-like motion control of such products as appliances and vehicle instrumentation, but the main area where the company has been rumored to be using the technology is in television. Reports have indicated that Apple is looking at Kinect-like motion control for its future television set, although the project is said to be seeing continuing delays due to difficult content negotiations with Apple shifting its near-term focus to wearables such as the "iWatch."
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Well, ****** Kinect tech was the beginning of the end for Xbox, so I hope it doesn't mean the same here.
Was it? Was it, really?
Apple is shifting its attention from a rumored speculative product to another rumored speculative product. Got it! Thanks MacRumors.
Im not sure what the issue is.
This is a rare case of Apple getting MS's sloppy seconds. Microsoft doesn't even use PrimeSense tech anymore in Kinect v2. They have some in-house "time of flight" technology that transcends what PrimeSense has done. We'll see if this is valuable at all to Apple.
It's still easier than developing from scratch.
No, the biggest problem with Kinect is Microsoft kept pushing this technology as a huge revolution when it was just a REALLY under-cooked add-on feature to a game console that didn't need it.
I'm glad Apple bought these people. Hopefully Apple can find a good use for this tech, unlike Microsoft who wasted it and crammed it down the throats of us gamers for WAY too long.
Ummm, I don't know about that. The X Box One has only been out for a few days.
This new iteration is capable of using hand gestures to control volume, change channels, pause, play, snap windows etc....
Microsoft really gets a lot of negative comments here on this site for no reason.
I like Microsoft and Apple. They are both amazing companies.
Seems like some of you just jet a huge boner when you bash Microsoft and that's just stupid