The Microsoft Kinect for Xbox was going to change the world, but then Microsoft killed it. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced it had discontinued the USB adapter for the Kinect sensor, a pioneering motion-sensing accessory line for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One that sold almost 30 million units in its lifetime.
Microsoft had discontinued the Kinect sensor itself in the Fall of 2017.
The Kinect was a huge bet for Microsoft, but it didn’t pay off — the technology wasn’t quite reliable enough, the games weren’t as good as they could be, and the novelty wore off.
The death of the Kinect has been a long time coming, with Microsoft removing the Kinect port from its most recent model of Xbox One consoles.
On Tuesday, Polygon reported that Microsoft had killed the USB adapter for the ahead-of-its-time motion sensor for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. That adapter let the Kinect work with the modern Xbox One S and Xbox One X models, as well as Windows PCs. Microsoft had officially discontinued manufacture of the Kinect sensor itself in the Fall of 2017.
Back in 2015, we took a deep look at the history of the Kinect and its downfall. The story below was originally published on September 8th, 2015, now updated to reflect current facts.
When the Kinect for Xbox 360 was first demonstrated in June 2009, it looked like the future of technology.
By tracking your body with an advanced infrared camera, sensors, and a microphone, the $150 Kinect accessory let you control games and media using just your body and voice.
But then, after Microsoft sold about 29 million of them for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, it just kind of faded away.
Even Microsoft appears to have given up on it — the Xbox One originally required Kinect to function, but Microsoft dropped that requirement last year.
There are only a handful of Kinect games available for the Xbox One. And the current-model Xbox One S, and the forthcoming Xbox One X, no longer have the correct port to directly plug in a Kinect — you need an optional $40 adapter.
What happened?
It looked like the future
The goal of Kinect was to broaden the Xbox 360 console’s appeal beyond who you would typically think of as “gamers.” Instead of playing games with intimidating and complicated controllers, you just had to move.
The Xbox 360 had been selling well since its 2005 introduction, but now needed something to set itself apart, as the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii were providing stiff competition.
The Kinect was intended to be a shot in the arm, extending the Xbox 360’s appeal and providing a new platform for games and content that could take it into the future. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Shane Kim once claimed that the Kinect would mean that the Xbox 360 could stay on the market through 2015.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer even tellingly referred to the Kinect as a “new Xbox” in one presentation.
At first, everything looked like it was going according to plan.
The Kinect launched with tons of fanfare — and a $500 million marketing budget — November 4, 2010, with the tagline “You Are the Controller.” Oprah Winfrey even gave away Xbox 360s and Kinects on an episode of her show.
You could either buy it separately for $150 or with an Xbox 360 in bundles starting at $299. The Xbox 360 interface itself was given a revamp to be more Kinect-friendly.
The press, especially the non-gaming mainstream media, ate it up and gave the Kinect glowing reviews. And within 60 days, Microsoft sold 8 million Kinects, earning it the Guinness World Record of “fastest-selling consumer device.”
Developers started to line up to make games for the device, too, with 17 available at launch, including “Kinect Adventures,” a Microsoft-made game that came packaged with the Kinect sensor.
Most of those games were panned by reviewers: “Critics are complaining about a lack of solid launch titles for the new control system; only ‘Dance Central’ seems to have anything to recommend it,” said a Metacritic roundup of launch titles at the time.
But people realized it was new technology, and they were willing to give it time. Even when people noticed that you needed a lot of space to make good use of the Kinect sensor, nobody seemed to mind moving their furniture.
At least, not at first.
Problem #1: Not enough great games
A slow but steady trickle of Kinect games came out over the following months, but a lot of them fell into the “family entertainment” or “fitness trainer” veins, far from the core gamer demographic that made up most of the Xbox 360-owning audience.
Worse, a lot of the titles got poor reviews, alienating those many who bought an Xbox 360 just to play Kinect games.
Microsoft convinced a lot of larger publishers of marquee franchise games to integrate Kinect features into their gameplay, but they were largely gimmicky — I’ll never forget the time my friend got a red card in “FIFA 15” soccer for the Xbox 360 because the Kinect’s microphone caught him swearing.
We asked a former Xbox insider familiar with the development of the Kinect why it was so hard to find any good games that did cool things with the sensor.
The simple answer is that the best of the best developers simply weren’t interested because they had invested so much in making their existing, lucrative, big-budget franchises work frighteningly well with a traditional controller.
“‘Halo’ doesn’t need Kinect — it has an incredibly precise and detailed control set, and further, can’t give a Kinect user an unfair advantage over non-Kinect owners,” the former Xbox insider says.
In other words, even if top-tier developers thought it was cool, they weren’t going to blow the time and budget to make it work with their existing games.
Plus, you didn’t need a Kinect to play those games, so many players likely didn’t even know there was any integration in those games at all.
At the same time, circa the early 2010s, those developers who were best suited to creating really new, innovative games for non-gaming crowds were starting to shift their efforts toward the iPhone and Android platforms, where there was cash and a rapidly growing audience to be found, the insider says.
Problem #2: “85% magic, 15% frustrating”
The Kinect also introduced voice commands and a gesture interface to the Xbox 360 itself. You could pause a movie with your voice, or log in to your account on the console by standing in front of the camera.
But as cool as that all sounded, the Kinect was still a new technology, and there were some glitches with those cool new interface tricks.
“It does do magic, but only 85% correctly. When you encounter the 15%, it’s frustrating,” the former Xbox insider said.
Tech: The rise and fall of Kinect: Why Microsoft gave up on its most promising product
