Kinect has sold over 5 million units, and is one of Microsoft’s most successful investments. Here’s the funny part: the Kinect could have been for a Mac. When Inon Beracha, CEP of PrimeSense- the firm that developed and provided the Kinect, first revealed this device back in 2008, their very first offer went to Apple, not Microsoft.
He claims that “It was the most natural place for the technology,” and they had already held several meetings with the executives of Apple to see this through. Fortunately for Microsoft, and us Xbox users, Apple’s notoriously controlling team became too much of a “pain in the ass” for him.
Asking him to “sign a stack of crippling legal agreements and NDAs”, it forced Beracha to walk away from the deal. Why deal with Apple at all when they could receive just as much of a payout, with far less of a hassle? So thank you Apple, for being such a pain in the ass.
