Kinect is not dead. That’s the message from Microsoft, despite the fact the peripheral was not mentioned once in its Xbox E3 press conference earlier this week.
“We are absolutely continuing to support Kinect," Xbox’s Aaron Greenberg told GameSpot. “We're continuing to support Kinect where it makes sense [and] innovating with Kinect in a different way.
“We really want Kinect to be a choice for customers. For me, I love it; I turn my Xbox One with Kinect; I use it for entertainment; I use it to do screenshots and all that. I like to be able to have my hands on the controller and use voice commands. But, frankly, a lot of people also want a better value and don't want to have to pay for it. So we're not going to force people to do that. We give people the choice."
Greenberg went on to cite Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana, which will be making its way to Xbox One at some point down the line. What he didn’t mention, though, were Kinect-specific games.
One of his colleagues has, however.
Xbox’s general manager of global games publishing Shannon Loftis claimed earlier this week that not only is the device still coming to Windows 10, but also that unannounced Kinect games are currently in development internally at Microsoft.
"It's still an option for gamers and it still powers what's special about how you can navigate the dashboard," she said. "They wanted a choice and they got a choice. It's still a going concern. More creators than you might expect are now engaging with Kinect for Xbox One."
The first Xbox One SKU to go on sale without bundling the motion camera arrived a little over a year ago. The company recently permanently cut the price of its entry-level £299.99 and introduced a £349.99 1TB model – neither of which include Kinect.