According to a report from FastCoDesign, Microsoft's once-popular gaming peripheral Kinect has been confirmed to stop manufacturing and production. However, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "Although production of Kinect for Xbox One has ended, this is not the end of the technology. Kinect will continue to provide entertainment experiences for tens of millions of Xbox users, and its innovations will be applied to Xbox One, Windows 10, Cortana, the augmented reality computing platform Windows Holographic, and future technologies."
It is reported that Kinect was officially announced as an Xbox 360 motion-sensing peripheral at Microsoft's E3 press conference on June 2, 2009, and was officially released at E3 2010. Since its launch in November 2010, Kinect has sold approximately 35 million units. Moreover, the Xbox 360 version of Kinect became the fastest-selling consumer device in 2011 and earned a Guinness World Record certification at that time.
However, Microsoft later attempted to bundle Kinect with the Xbox One S and created an unsightly accessory, which led to a decline in Kinect sales.
Although Kinect sales have declined, the research and hardware from Kinect have helped Microsoft advance its products elsewhere. For example, the HoloLens holographic glasses and Windows Mixed Reality headsets use many Kinect technologies for depth sensing, and the Surface product line and other Windows 10 laptops are equipped with Windows Hello cameras that use Kinect facial recognition technology, among others.
