Asus is hoping to capture some of the Kinect’s good will starting this October by kicking off a marketing campaign for its motion controller clone. The WAVI Xtion was created in partnership with PrimeSense, the same group partly responsible for the Microsoft Kinect — hence the familiar design and capabilities. Asus demoed the device last January at CES 2011, but Digitimes is now reporting that Asus is set to start marketing the kit this October as Asus, which comes after its self-imposed Q2 release target.
This isn’t the first time Asus turned to the gaming world for “inspiration.” The Eee Stick launched several years after the Wii, but was targeted to buyers of its popular Eee netbook. The motion controller functioned and looked very similar to Nintendo’s Wii Remotes. Never heard of the Eee Stick? Yeah, that’s the problem.
The WAVI Xtion is supposed to bring the fun and function of the Kinect to the livingroom PC. Asus thinks (and hopes) that the device will bring the same sort of motion interactivity to the PC desktop as the Kinect did to the Xbox 360. The same Digitimes report indicates that the target price will be around $250-$300, which is a tad more than the Kinect’s $150 price tag. Reportedly the device will first go on sale in China where the 360 is banned by the government. No word on the release date, though.