Ditching the Kinect motion gaming sensor with the Xbox One could improve its processing power.
Microsoft may be able to free up some processing power with the Xbox One when it no longer bundles the Kinect with its newest console.
According to a new report published by Polygon, Microsoft is “re-examining the Xbox One’s hardware architecture” to look at the resources currently reserved for the Kinect and how they could be reallocated to boost game performance.
Following the announcement Microsoft is launching a Kinect-free Xbox One bundle in June, Xbox’s Yusef Mehdi revealed the company is “in discussions with our game publishers about what we might do in this space and we will have more to talk about soon.”
Apparently the Xbox One “reserves 10 per cent of graphics resources for Kinect and apps functionality”, so this could be used to boost graphical performance for gaming.
It has already been claimed that Microsoft intended to “open up this additional GPU power for game development in the future.”
Microsoft originally said it would never launch a Kinect-free Xbox One as the motion gaming sensor was a crucial part of the Xbox One experience.
“We remain deeply committed to the Kinect as a core component of a next-generation console,” Mehdi added. “We think that 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 launch.”
However, the latest decision is Microsoft’s attempt to be responsive to gamer feedback and is in part driven by Xbox 360 adoption.
“We still have over 80 million people who have yet to buy Xbox One.”
No doubt the recent 7 million PS4 sales figures haven’t helped the situation either, especially as the latest figures released by Microsoft show 5 million Xbox One sales to retailers rather than individual consumers.
The Kinect-free Xbox One will be available from June 9.
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