14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Microsoft in charge of the original Kinect motion tracking sensor announces that it will no longer sell the device starting later in the year and that it will no longer offer any long-term support for it as it encourages as many users as possible to move to the more recent version of the device.
The company launched the v2 sensor and the associated Software Development Kit in October and says that it is designed to offer more powerful features and to replace the original, while introducing a range of new concepts.
The official announcement states, “At the same time that we publicly released the v2 sensor and its SDK, we also announced the availability of the Kinect Adapter for Windows, which lets developers create Kinect for Windows applications by using a Kinect for Xbox One sensor.”
Microsoft claims that the v2 version of Kinect for Windows has a solid development community and that apps for it are being revealed every day.
The original Kinect remains in use with a variety of businesses that are unable or unwilling to update their hardware and software, and the company says that those who use a significant number of devices need to contact the team in order to discuss long-term prospects.
Microsoft adds, “All of us on the Kinect for Windows team are grateful to all of you in the community who jumped on this technology and showed us what it could do. We know that your proven track record doing great things with the original technology will only get better with v2—the improvements in quality from the original Kinect for Windows sensor to the v2 device are truly immense.”
Kinect is no longer a core part of the Xbox One home console
When it was first introduced, Kinect offered some intriguing possibilities but it was not well supported with apps and games by Microsoft.
When the Xbox One was announced, the company said that motion tracking would be a more integral part of the experience and would allow gamers to control their home console in innovative ways.
Since the device was launched, Microsoft dropped Kinect from the core retail package and it seems that the more recent version of the technology will remain marginal to the long-term plans for the platform as no major titles that use it are set to be launched in 2015.
