Microsoft admits that it has stopped making Kinect

Microsoft has admitted that it has ceased production of its motion-detecting Kinect peripheral for the Xbox games console, shifting its focus on the vastly more expensive HoloLens instead.

It comes despite Microsoft's effort to push Kinect onto customers when it first launched the Xbox One in November 2013.

But Kinect creator Alex Kipman and Xbox general manager Matthew Lapsen admitted to Fast Company this week that the company is bringing production of the peripheral to an end.

They said that while Microsoft will continue to support Kinect for existing customers on Xbox, it will produce no more units when retailers sell off their existing stock. Fast Company notes that support for ongoing developer tools remain unclear.

Oddly enough, the decision comes amid rumours that Apple is struggling with production of the iPhone X's Face ID sensor, which uses similar technology to the Microsoft peripheral.

Although its rapidly declining popularity is likely to blame for Kinect's end of life status, Microsoft hasn't elaborated much on its decision to kill-off the once-popular peripheral.

However, Golan Levin, director of the Studio for Creative Inquiry at CMU, told Fast Company: "Someone has made the decision that there aren't enough games being sold that use it and it's a shame.

"This is one of those times I'm sad to hear that a tool which is used for so many different applications, and is so ubiquitous, and has served crucially as a platform for so much creative experimentation, cultural progress, and secondary innovation, in so many different fields, isn't supporting their core business," he said.

:story: V3.co.uk