14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Microsoft in charge of the Xbox One says that it has no plans to abandon the Kinect motion tracking system in the short term because it continues to offer a set of features to the next-gen device that cannot be replicated in any other way.
Larry Hryb, the leading community manager at the company, states on his most recent podcast that, “We are not discontinuing Kinect or support for it. We still have a whole team of folks working on that. But we want to give everybody who would like to get in on the Xbox One action an opportunity.”
The reassurance comes after Microsoft has already announced that some developers from Rare, which was creating Kinect titles, were let go.
The company is also saying that in five years all home consoles will include some sort of voice control, which means that Kinect will continue to be developed in order to improve its capabilities.
On June 9, Microsoft will deliver a version of the Xbox One that does not include the motion-tracking system, with a reduced price of 399 dollars or Euro, in order to increase its appeal when compared with the PlayStation 4 from Sony.
A standalone Kinect might be launched in the fall and Microsoft has said that the exact price will be offered at a later date.