Mehdi – Xbox One with Kinect is still the ‘premium experience’

Microsoft may have bowed to market pressures and cut Kinect from Xbox One, but it hasn’t given up its Kinect charm offensive.

Even now the company is still refusing to acknowledge the camera’s unpopularity and is instead insisting that the 349 Kinect-free SKU is still just the first step in getting people to buy the device in the future.

"The decision we’re announcing today is offering a choice to people that would allow people to buy an Xbox One and then ramp up to Kinect when they can afford to," corporate vice president for devices and studios Yusuf Mehdi told Polygon.

All of which doggedly assumes that the only problem consumers have with Kinect is its price and not the very principles on which it was designed.

Continued Mehdi: "Our view is that the Xbox One with Kinect is the premium experience. The things you are able to do are pretty magical. I think that (early adopters) are hopefully delighted as well with their usage.

"We remain deeply committed to the Kinect as a core component of a next-generation console. We think that the bio-metric sign-in, voice controls of the menu, ability to say ‘record that’ and capture a moment of gameplay are all critical to the experience. We have never wavered from that since the launch."

Microsoft has said Kinect will go on sale as a standalone purchase later this year.