Kinect Can Get 10 Times Better in a Few Years, John Carmack Believes

id Software boss John Carmack, the man behind hugely successful games like Quake or Doom, is quite thrilled with the Kinect sensor and Microsoft's efforts to promote it, especially since he believes that the technology can be improved by leaps and bounds in the next couple of years.

Carmack is one of the most respected industry figures when it comes to technological insight, so Tom's Guide asked him a few things about the Kinect sensor for the Xbox 360 and what its future might look like.

Carmack first took the time to applaud Microsoft for releasing a Kinect SDK for the PC, allowing enthusiasts to play with the device in an official way, without resorting to hacks or other such programs.

"It was good of Microsoft to rush a little bit ahead of them, that wave of people hacking it for themselves, and release an official SDK," he said.

A few months after the release of the Kinect last year, people were already tinkering with the device, using it to play World of Warcraft for example, or design autonomous vacuum cleaners. Now, with the PC SDK, things are progressing in all sorts of directions.

In terms of the Kinect's future, Carmack is quite optimistic, highlighting that the technology in it can be improved in drastic ways, so the sensor can see its abilities improve tenfold in the next few years.

"The Kinect is a scalable technology, which I'm pretty excited about. And that technology can get ten times better in the coming years, so I think it's an important thing to be playing around with," said Carmack.

Still, don't expect the id Software boss to militate for Kinect support in all games, including the upcoming Rage, for example, as the experiences need to be focused on the control input right from the start.

"It's not something that you can tack onto an existing game," Carmack emphasized. "We got asked a lot about what can we do with Kinect or the PlayStation Move with Rage, and it's like well...nothing, really. It's not that they're not good, but you just don't bolt that kind of technology on. Games are all about designing around your controls."

Microsoft is quite confident in the Kinect, saying that now, as we approach the device's 1-year anniversary, developers are unlocking its true potential while experiences are becoming much more fluid, without any sort of lag in input.