This is one of several niche technologies that Microsoft needs to hand off to a smaller company or an open source outfit. Another is the Explorer trackball. None of these are sufficiently profitable for a company the size of Microsoft, but could be made by smaller outfits.
The Kinect sensor, in particular, can be used to do motion capture for pennies on the dollar compared to traditional ball suit and camera rigs (se, for example, iPi soft). The benefits for student film makers, physics and biomechanics courses should be obvious.
