Leap Motion inks Best Buy exclusive for motion-tracking dongle

Leap Motion's ultra-precise Controller will launch at Best Buy exclusively, the company has announced, with pre-orders of the motion-tracking dongle kicking off in February. Set to go on sale both in Best Buy stores and through the retailer's site – in addition to Leap Motion's own preorders – the 3-inch long gadget hooks up to your computer via USB, and can track the movements of up to ten individual fingers around it.

In fact, Leap Motion's technology can not only track ten fingers, but with an accuracy of up to 1/100th of a millimeter. There's no visible delay in the tracking either, the company says, thanks to a 290fps capture rate, and the area of sensitivity covers 150-degrees.

Of course, hardware is only half of the equation, and so Leap Motion has been working on cultivating the developer scene so that there's sufficient software to make owning the controller itself worthwhile. 12,000 free developer units have already been seeded, with applications in gaming, computer-aided design, augmented reality, and more.

Leap Motion walkthrough:

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Earlier this month, Leap Motion announced a deal with ASUS to instill select future PCs from the company with integrated motion-control tracking. This new deal with Best Buy will mean even those without a new ASUS PC will be able to join in, though the retailer will only be the exclusive North American sales partner.

Those outside of the US and Canada can order direct from the manufacturer, with the controller varying in price depending on your country. In the US, it's $69.99 before shipping; for a UK delivery, for instance, that rises to $83.99 before shipping. Deliveries are expected early this year.