Leap Motion Controller Shipping Soon, Costs Less Than A Benjamin

The Leap Motion Controller will begin shipping mid-May, and will cost you less than a hundred dollars, a small price to pay for being able to control your computer by swiping through the air.

Leap Motion announced today that those who got pre-orders in will see their Leap Motion Controller ship May 13th, and cost a measly $80.00. If you weren’t on the up-and-up when the company began taking pre-orders and you don’t want to wait around for your shipment, the company will begin selling the Leap Motion Controller at U.S. Best Buy stores on May 19th.

Think of the Leap Motion Controller as an Xbox Kinect, but for your computer. The device will work on OS X 10.7 and 10.8 as well as Windows 7 and 8.

Just like every other peripheral that’s announced these days, the success of the Leap Motion Controller will rely heavily on application integration. Yesterday we published a video of Realmac Software’s Clear application running alongside the Leap Motion Controller. Leap Motion announced today that the device will also work with Cut The Rope, Wreck It Ralph, and Painter Freestyle. Also, Leap Motion has announced its own app store, and named the store Airspace.

The real challenge is going to be whether or not Leap Motion can take this thing from novelty to practical in the minds of consumers. It’s pretty cool, and there’s no doubt that it will see plenty of sales on that factor, but it’s still a question of whether or not consumers will gravitate back to a mouse and trackpad.

Cut The Rope, however, is the perfect partner to launch the Leap Motion Controller with, and we’re sure we’ll see plenty of bumped elbows as people hack and slash in mid-air.

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.