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With the holiday shopping season just around the corner, Microsoft is slashing the price of its hot-selling Xbox Kinect hands-free motion controller.

Starting immediately, the U.S. price for the standalone Kinect Sensor, not including an Xbox console, falls from $149.99 to $109.99, a reduction of 27%.

"There will be also a permanently reduced price in North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific regions where Kinect is sold," said Larry Hryb, director of Xbox Live programming, in a blog post announcing the price cut.

"Additionally, on October 4, the Kinect sensor will be available for a permanently reduced price in Australia and New Zealand," said Hryb, who goes by the handle "Major Nelson" when he's on the Xbox Live network. "The final retail price will vary in each region based on the currency and other variables." As of Thursday, the new price was already in effect on major retail sites like Best Buy and Amazon.

Xbox users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Japan are out of luck however. Those regions will not see Kinect price cuts, according to Hryb.

Kinect, which allows users to control on-screen Xbox action through physical gestures and voice commands, is the fastest-selling product in tech industry history, according to Guinness Records. Consumers will no doubt welcome the price cut, but for Microsoft, the platform is about more than just orcs and avatars.

To drive commercial development, the company has released a toolkit that helps developers build Kinect awareness into Windows applications. The Kinect for Windows SDK gives software developers the ability to create apps that leverage Kinect's most advanced capabilities, including sound localization, depth and distance interpretation, skeletal tracking, and advanced audio processing.

In one non-gaming application, healthcare tech specialist Tedesys, of Cantabria, Spain, is developing a Kinect-based platform that's meant to allow physicians to operate on patients through remotely controlled instruments--an application that could save lives in disaster areas, battlefields, and other areas that may be physically inaccessible or where it would be too dangerous to send in doctors.

Numerous organizations that represent other industries are also deploying pilot projects around Kinect, according to Microsoft. Toyota, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Razorfish are among the early adopters.

Microsoft hopes that the promise of hands-free interaction, along with advances in 3-D technology, will lend a new lease on life to Windows PCs, which have seen a drop off in sales as more consumers turn to tablets and smartphones for their computing and communications needs.

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