US Xbox One sales ‘more than double’ after Kinect dropped

Xbox One sales in American have more than doubled following the release of a Kinect-less SKU, Microsoft has said.

"Since the new Xbox One offering launched on June 9th, we’ve seen sales of Xbox One more than double in the US, compared to sales in May," the company explained in an announcement (via CVG), citing "internal data based on retail calendar and sold through numbers".

Originally included with every Xbox One, the Kinect was removed from the console for a lower-price offering.

The Kinect-less console currently retails for 349 in the UK, 50 cheaper than the console and Kinect bundle, which launched in November last year for 429 before falling to 399 in February.

Many saw the removal of the Kinect and subsequent drop in price as an attempt to compete more directly with Sony’s cheaper PS4, which is currently outselling the Xbox One by roughly two million units.

Xbox chief Phil Spencer previously stated, before the Kinect-less Xbox One was announced, that dropping the motion-sensing camera was not the top request among gamers, despite many decrying the peripheral as an unnecessary addition to the box.