The second version of the Kinect uses time-of-flight sensing rather than the projected grid of points, and is considerably more accurate.
Whether or not this makes the scanning more plausible, I am not sure. However, some of the 3D models generated with the Kinect 2 [1] do seem to contain a decent amount of detail.
[1] http://zugara.com/wp-content/uploads/Kinect-1-vs-Kinect-2-Vi...