We've kept our eye on Leap Motion's gesture control system ever since the company first unveiled the tiny device less than a year ago – and apparently so have "hundreds of thousands" other people among developers and early adopter who've pre-ordered it. Today, the San Francisco-based announced it will begin fulfilling those orders starting on May 13th, with retail availability set for May 19 at Best Buy stores across the US.
The launch price will be $79.99, up $10 from the introductory pre-order price. Pre-orders are still available from Leapmotion.com, for U.S. and international orders, while BestBuy.com will begin taking U.S. pre-orders today.
Leap Motion also revealed the name for its curated app store, Airspace, along with a handful of software titles that will be available at launch. These include a Wreck-It Ralph-themed racing game from Disney, Double Fine's music game Dischord, ZeptoLab's Cut the Rope, plug-ins for 3D modeling software Autodesk, a Leap-native paint program from Corel, and a Weather Channel app. Earlier this week, Realmac Software also revealed plans to support Leap Motion with the Mac version of its to-do list app, Clear.
This first group of apps should provide a solid base to get things started, but a big part of Leap Motion's plan is to get independent third-party developing for its motion controller system. According to the company, 52,000 developers have applied for Leap Motion developer kits, and 12,000 have already been sent out.
Airspace will launch with full support for Windows 7 and 8, as well as Mac OS 10.7 and 10.8. Apps sold through Leap Motion's app store will mirror the same 30/70 revenue split model popularized by Apple's App Store.