Despite Kinect being just around the corner, it seems Microsoft already seem to be thinking pretty far ahead for the future of motion sensing controllers, after buying up the people from Canesta. Canesta are makers of 3D depth perception sensors which, although are currently only used on PCs for navigation and other simple tasks (see video link at the bottom for demonstration), could be the future for the way the Kinect works.
The video which shows Canesta's technology in action, shows that you could get a whole new way for Kinect-like technologies to work in the future, such as considering very precise movements through a sensor and taking depth into further perception. As well as this, we could be seeing the technology on Windows-running desktop PCs, something which Steve Jobs has been very much against for Macs as said during the Mac OS X Lion announcement. However, if this sort of (rather impressive) technology were to be a hit maybe the stubborn Apple man will crack.
Video: Canesta tech Demo
Via: Electric Pig