Microsoft Officially Kills Xbox's Kinect, Stops Manufacturing It

Kinect, the motion-sensing device for Xbox 360 and Xbox One, is now officially dead. Microsoft has confirmed that it's no longer manufacturing the device and the company won't sell anymore even if retailers run out, Fast Company reports.

Introduced in 2009's E3 as "Project Natal", Kinect debuted in E3 2010 under its brand name. the device launched on the following October for the Xbox 360 and reformulated 3 years later for the Xbox One, Microsoft says that Kinect sold 35 million Kinect devices in its lifetime For those who own one of the two sensors, Kinect support will continue "but ongoing developer tools remain unclear," according to Fast Company in an interview with Kinect's creator, Alex Kipman, and Matthew Lapsen, the general manager of marketing for Xbox Devices.

This isn't surprising since there weren't a lot of games that utilized the technology in recent years. The Kinect for Xbox One was mostly used for voice recognition and occassionally to snap photos and scan QR codes to connect gamers to DLC faster. Kinect's short-lived run reminds me of trends like the dance pads for games like Dance Dance Revolution, and guitar controllers for Guitar Hero.

People just didn't care much about Microsoft's original vision for the Kinect, which received bad publicity when Ad Age reported comments from a senior Microsoft executive talking about Kinect's ability to gather user data and serve them targeted ads. It was also reported that the NSA used the device to spy on American citizens, which Microsoft denied.

In May 2014, Microsoft announced that Kinect would no longer be included in Xbox One packages, dropping its price by $100 as a result. By E3 2015, Microsoft was longer talking about the device.

A representative from Microsoft shared this statement about Kinect:

Manufacturing for Kinect for Xbox One has ended but it is not the end of the journey for the technology. Kinect continues to delight tens of millions of Xbox owners and Kinect innovations live on in Xbox One, Windows 10, Cortana, Windows Holographic and future technologies

Read more: Here's A List of Backwards Compatible Xbox Games Available For Xbox One