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Microsoft Is Ending Xbox Fitness, With Wind-Down Starting Today
One of the biggest reasons to own a Kinect is coming to an end. Microsoft has announced plans to sunset its Xbox Fitness service, beginning today.
As of now, you can no longer buy new content. Those who have purchased workout routines will still be able to use them until June 30, 2017.
Those who are Xbox Live Gold members are still in good shape until December 15, 2016. At that point, the “free with gold” offer will expire. Currently, more than 30 workouts are available as part of this program.
Finally, on July 1, 2017, the service comes to a complete end. Purchased content will be unavailable for download and play at that time.
Microsoft says that the reason for the termination is because the service requires regular content updates. “Given the service relies on providing you with new and exciting content regularly, Microsoft has given much consideration to the reality updating the service regularly in order to sustain it,” writes Microsoft marketing and social media specialist Erica Bell.
The service launched alongside the Xbox One, and was one of the showpiece’s for the Kinect’s biometric tracking feature. Later, the option to use the service without Kinect was added, as fewer consoles were sold with the peripheral bundled in.
[Source: Microsoft]
Our Take
Variety is a boon when considering workouts. However, if people have been able to purchase and download content, it’s unclear why that needs to disappear, too. If you purchase fitness programs on DVD, those aren’t updated constantly and still have merit years after use. If there were a way to offer this to all users without the biometric tracking (an option that currently exists for those that don’t have Kinect), it seems that would be the better course.
Many users in the comments are identifying just that problem, requesting that Microsoft offers the content without the leaderboard, progress, and biometric features. Microsoft hasn’t detailed its decision well, and it has angry users who have spent a great deal of money that are owed some kind of explanation.
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