Microsoft has finally decided that it is time to stop manufacturing the Kinect, its motion sensor and voice recognition accessory for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. It sold around 35m units since debuting almost seven years ago.

The death of the Kinect, which was reported by the Fast Company, has been a long time coming, however – with Microsoft removing the Kinect port from the most recent Xbox One consoles.

The standalone Kinect, despite being recognised by Guinness World Records as the fastest-selling consumer device back in 2011, struggled to really catch-on. It may have sold around 35m units, but it’s likely many of these were bundled with consoles, as opposed to being bought separately.

The device was probably a little ahead of its time and struggled with various limitations and flaws. The main ones of these being the lack of solid games, its sometimes slow – or non-existent – recognition of movement and voice commands, and the fact people needed quite a large space to operate it in. Despite this, the influence of the Kinect technology still very much lives on at Microsoft.

The Kinect’s core sensor is what powers Microsoft’s HoloLens, the mixed reality smartglasses developed and manufactured by the tech giant. And he Kinect’s technologies, and team, have helped out on several other Microsoft products, including its Cortana voice assistant and Hello cameras.

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