Microsoft clearly wants its Kinect motion gesture device and technology to be one of its major focuses of the company. After first launching as an Xbox 360 add-on in 2012, the Kinect for Windows version will launch next week on Wednesday, February 1. Now it appears that Microsoft wants to hire even more team members to work with Kinect on two new development studios.
As first spotted by a poster on the NeoGAF forums, Microsoft has two new job listings relating to Kinect. One of them is looking for a senior HR manager "in support of two of our key internal studios, 343 Industries (responsible for the Halo gaming franchise) and Platform Next Studios (pioneering experiences on Kinect)."
The Platform Next Studios is one that hasn't been mentioned, at least in public, by Microsoft before now. It's unclear what the team might be working on beyond the vague "pioneering experiences on Kinect" statement.
The other job listing is looking for a qualified level designer for something called "Microsoft Studios-LEAP". The listing says that LEAP is composed of "the people that developed Kinect and profoundly changed the way people interact with technology. Now our incubation team is ready to change the world again, but we need your help!"
It sounds like this job might be based on working on the next "leap" (get it?) beyond the Kinect device. If so, it's likely to be a while before we learn what this team will be working on.
