CES 2011 Brings Us The First Of The Kinect Clones For PC

Computer hardware manufacturer ASUS has teamed up with the makers of Kinect‘s camera technology, PrimeSense, to bring controller-free, gesture-based gaming to your PC this year, a product it will show off at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show.

It is, essentially, the Xbox 360’s Kinect controller, but with a less graceful name: the WAVI Xtion. The system pairs PrimeSense’s 3D motion capture camera technology (the Xtion) with a transmitter/receiver (the Wireless Audio & Video Interaction system, or WAVI) to get the gesture-based job done. ASUS hopes the “next generation user interface device developed by ASUS [will] extend PC usage to the living room,” according to its official press release

The WAVI Xtion’s official announcement touts the ability to interact with multimedia, social networks and “exciting” gesture-based games. The WAVI Xtion is scheduled to be released in the second quarter of 2011, with a worldwide release expected “in phases.”

Kotaku will be on hand and ready to gesture at this years CES, so keep an eye peeled for hands-off WAVI Xtion impressions. Your best guesses about how one pronounces “Xtion” is welcome in the comments.