Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

The Kinect for the Xbox hasn’t been that successful. The most use I get out of it has been “Xbox, Pause”. It has potential, but it just didn’t have much support. Even then, it wasn’t the best support. Microsoft has stopped the production of the device, giving it’s last nail in the coffin.

It wasn’t a bad device by any measure. It just didn’t have the games or applications to make it a hit.

The Kinect had already been slowly de-emphasized by Microsoft, as the Xbox team anchored back around traditional gaming to counter the PS4, rather than take its more experimental approach to entertainment. Yet while the Kinect as a standalone product is off the market, its core sensor lives on. Kinect v4–and soon to be, v5–powers Microsoft’s augmented reality Hololens, which Kipman also created. Meanwhile, Kinect’s team of specialists have gone on to build essential Microsoft technologies, including the Cortana voice assistant, the Windows Hello biometric facial ID system, and a context-aware user interface for the future that Microsoft dubs Gaze, Gesture, and Voice (GGV).