New Xbox One Experience update to remove some of the Kinect’s deadweight

The New Xbox One Experience is coming and it's bringing a number of improvements like backward compatibility, a new Guide, redesigned Avatars and more, but to make the new experience the best experience possible the deadweight had to be dropped.

After the New Xbox One Experience update, the Xbox One will no longer feature the Kinect's gesture controls.

"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," said Mike Ybarra in an interview with 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."

While Microsoft is removing gesture controls, they won't be removing features that impact Kinect-enabled games, biometric sign-in, and video calls with Skype for Xbox One. Ybarra did leave room for the possibility that the feature could make a comeback, if the community called for it.