Monday, Apr. 04, 2011
Alex Kipman
Age: 31
Occupation: Director of incubation, Microsoft
Previous TIME 100 appearances: 0
Microsoft's Kinect made huge strides not only for the gaming industry this year, but also for the future of interactive media. The motion-sensor plug-in for the Xbox 360 turns the gamer into the controller; the game is directed by the body movements of the users themselves. At the center of the task sat Alex Kipman, who led Kinect to market from its formative days as Project Natal, named after Kipman's hometown in Brazil. Kipman didn't want to catch up with Nintendo's Wii, he wanted to bound over it — and so they did, selling 1 million units in the first 10 days after Kinect's release alone.