Following a $3,000 bounty put up by the open source community for anyone able to create an open source driver for Kinect, Microsoft told CNET on November 4 that it "does not condone the modification of its products."
A similar bounty was put up by Google engineer Matt Cutts last week. The gamer community has found numerous alternative uses for Kinect already, including as a controller for Minority Report-style multitouch and the ability to capture 3D video.
Initially, Microsoft was not pleased with the popularity of Kinect hacking. "With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering," the company said in a statement to CNET on the day of the device's U.S. launch. "Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."
However, Microsoft appears to have changed its tune. On the November 19 broadcast of National Public Radio's Science Daily program, director of incubation for Xbox Alex Kipman said that the Kinect was left open "by design."
The full excerpt is below:
"Kinect was not actually hacked. Hacking would mean that someone got to our algorithms that sit inside of the Xbox and was able to actually use them. Which hasn't happened. Or, it means that you put a device between the sensor and the Xbox for means of cheating, which also has not happened. That's what we call hacking, and that's what we put a ton of work and effort in to make sure doesn't actually occur.
"What has happened is someone wrote a open source driver for PCs, which essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn't protect by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor."
Kipman also said that fans "hacking" Kinect would not result in a legal action. Fellow Microsoftie, Shannon Loftis, a studio manager at Microsoft Game Studios, said that she is "excited to see that people are so inspired" to think about what they can create using the Kinect hardware.