When Microsoft unveiled its next-generation video game console, the Xbox One, they announced that every system would come with the next version of its Kinect sensor. In fact, the Xbox One requires the Kinect to function. Now the company has confirmed that the new Kinect is also coming to Windows PCs next year.

This is significant because Microsoft has always had aspirations for the Kinect to be much more than just video games. When they released the first Kinect for Windows, they used this video to promote it and all the different things that might be possible with Kinect:

While the applications of the video certainly looked impressive, the next-generation Kinect is lightyears ahead of the first model. It’s capable of things like monitoring your heart rate through the changes in pigmentation on your skin, the amount of exertion you put in your muscle movements and seeing in pitch-black darkness. It can also track different body parts more accurately, like fingers.

When the next Kinect makes it way to the Xbox One and eventually to our PCs, those concept videos that Microsoft showed us could soon turn into reality. Unless another motion sensor takes off instead.

[via Polygon]