Microsoft has announced they’re officially ending production of their Kinect hardware – the motion controlled peripheral launched over a decade ago.

The new post on their mixed reality blog confirmed they’re going to end production of the platform’s latest release – Azure Kinect – and will instead offer the technology to third-party partners so they can produce alternatives.

“As the needs of our customers and partners evolve, we regularly update our products to best support them,” the company said. “From time to time, this includes introducing new opportunities, as well as retiring products. We have made the decision to end production of Azure Kinect Developer Kit, but this is far from the end of this technology as it will continue to be available through our partner ecosystem.”

This is actually the second time Kinect has been killed off – the company stopped production of the device in 2017 but revived it in 2019 in its latest iteration, Azure Kinect.

The original iteration of Kinect launched way back in 2010 for the Xbox 360. The Kinect 2.0 successor was heavily touted with the launch of Xbox One, though it failed to catch on. Since then Microsoft has been pushing the platform for enterprise and AI uses.

“Thank you for your support and feedback over the years. It is amazing what Microsoft and the developer community have been able to achieve together,” Microsoft said.

Companies that have been using Azure Kinect will be able to keep using the software and the development toolkits until the end of October, or until they run out of units.

This is Niche Gamer Tech. In this column, we regularly cover tech and things related to the tech industry.