It seems crazy that it has taken this long, but seven months after the peripherals hugely successful launch on Xbox 360, Microsoft have finally released the long-promised Windows PC SDK for the Kinect motion control sensor.

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. It enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system.

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

Up until now, all the wounderous Kinect hackery had been possible thanks to the work of resourceful developers creating their own Linux drivers for the device and had still produced some pretty amazing stuff.

This move finally paves the way for the wider adoption of Kinect applications outside of Xbox gaming, so it will be very interesting to see what will now be possible with official Windows support from Redmond.

Head over to research.microsoft.com to start tinkering.