In what must be a particularly funny maneuver in Sony’s eyes, a hacker has managed to make the Microsoft Kinect work with a PlayStation 3. In a video demo he’s shown that he’s managed to get the peripheral to operate on the PS3 to the point where he can log into his account, navigate the UI, and even play Killzone 3.

I’m sure there’s no shortage of PlayStation 3 fans frothing at the mouth about this one; but to us it’s a sign that Kinect can connect with anything. (Maybe next someone will put one atop their car.)

Coder, and now Kinect hacker, Shantanu Goel demonstrates his skills:

See this first: http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2011/03/20/making-kinect-work-with-ps3.html & source code at http://github.com/shantanugoel/kinect-ps3.
My project “Kinect PS3” in action, showing using Microsoft Kinect as a controller for Sony PS3.

The video isn’t as exciting as it could have been, but it certainly demos his project to-a-T and delivers exactly what we expected: someone playing Killzone 3 on a PS3 with the Kinect. The system seems extremely awkward for an FPS and he still has a long way to go before it’s viable but it’s still another interesting little innovation on the front of getting the Kinect to connect to everything.

As I said above, this might seem a bit of a corny move to Sony—who have their own motion detection/controller system with the Move. Recently, Sony even embraced their own developer community with Move.Me; attempting to get ahead of the sudden explosion of hackers and developers interested in innovating and extending the capabilities and functionality of the Kinect.

So far, we’ve seen very little news coming out of the Move.Me front, but the Microsoft Kinect continues to make splashes in an educational capacity with American Sign Language, providing a cheap platform for 3D garage-animators, and revolutionizing gesture-based user interfaces.

More power to coders like Shantanu Goel.