‘Vast Majority’ of Xbox One Owners Still Use Kinect

Microsoft marketing executive Mike Nichols has told Polygon the "vast majority" of Xbox One owners who still have a Kinect sensor use the camera peripheral regularly.

While Nichols declined to state exactly how many people use it or how many have been sold, he did say most people use it for non-gaming purposes, "I can say that the people with Kinect still make up a very, very sizable portion and that those people do use it quiet frequently. Less for games, but a lot more for biometric sign-in and user interface."

The Xbox One was bundled with the Kinect sensor when the system launched in November 2013, with Microsoft saying the two were inseparable. Microsoft later made the console available for less, without the Kinect bundle, which is sold separately for $150.

Future Xbox One updates will take account of the fact that some users don't have Kinect, but Nichols compares it to the situation with the Xbox 360.

"It's not unlike the situation with Xbox 360, when we added Kinect and you had to design for with and without systems," he said. "That same part of the decision trees exists now. Now we're not designing for everyone who has it or everyone doesn't have it. We're designing for a good chunk who have it and use it and some new customers who now have decided to get an Xbox One who don't have a Kinect, at least not yet."

While Kinect will be updated to allow Cortana voice search, Nichols declined to provide details on games using the peripheral.