New Xbox One Experience Removes All Kinect Based UI Navigation

Even as the Kinect basically died a slow death for games, it remained useful to multiple Xbox One owners as it provided for some easy and highly intuitive navigation of the Xbox One UI, which had been made for Kinect based interactions anyway. However, now it will be losing even that final bit of usefulness, as the New Xbox One Experience dispenses with all Kinect based navigation anyway.

“On gestures, when we looked at the New Xbox One Experience, we wanted to prioritize features that customers were asking for, plus areas of improvement from the existing Xbox One UI,”Microsoft’s Mike Ybarra told WindowsCentral. “Then, we wanted to look at the use-case model of features that take a lot of investment and say, ‘Is it worth continuing to invest in that area?’

“With gestures, the reality was the usage was very, very low,” he said. “So for now, we’ve cut that from the New Xbox One Experience. So when we launch, they won’t be in the product. We’ll continue to monitor and listen to feedback to see if people want them in.”

Microsoft also clarified that the aim of the new update was speed.

“Gesture controls for navigating the dashboard were removed to focus on fan-requested features resulting in a faster and more social Xbox One experience,” a representative said to Gamespot. “Kinect motion detection continues to be available for Kinect-enabled games, biometric sing-in, and video calls with Skype for Xbox One.”

So… yeah, guys, Kinect is even more useless now.