Xbox Series X will drop support for Kinect, including Kinect games

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Published onJuly 16, 2020

published onJuly 16, 2020

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Microsoft’s Kinect accessory won’t be supported on the company’s next-gen Xbox Series X console launching later this year. The news came from Xbox head Phil Spencer today in a blog post that also mentioned thefree inclusion of Project xCloud with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in September.

“It’s our intent for all Xbox One games that do not require Kinect to play on Xbox Series X at the launch of the console. And because of the unprecedented power of Xbox Series X, most of your favorite games will load faster and look and perform many times better on the new console,” Phil Spencerexplained.

“There’s no way for Kinect to work,” the head of Xbox also said in an interview withThe Verge. That’s a bit surprising, as the Xbox Series X will apparently use the same OS as the Xbox One S and Xbox One X consoles, which still support Kinect via a USB adapter. However, that accessory hasbeen discontinued in 2018, one year after Microsoftstopped manufacturing the Kinect 2.0.

The original Xbox One console that launched in 2013 included a Kinect in the box, with Microsoft hoping that making the accessory broadly available will push more game developers to create Kinect games. That ultimately didn’t happen, and Microsoft started offering cheaper Xbox One bundles without its Kinect 2.0 accessory a year later.

Microsoft’s Kinect technology lives on in other products such as theAzure Kinect DK camera, which developers can use to build computer vision and speech models. Kinect fans will still be able to use the accessory on Xbox One consoles, but Kinect voice commands can now be replaced by Xbox skills for Alexa and the Google Assistant.

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time).

For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web.

Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they’re looking for.

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