Microsoft pulls the plug on Azure Kinect Developer Kit, but partners will be able to license the depth-sensing camera technology, the company has announced.

The company officially stopped manufacturing the depth camera and microphone in 2017 but, in 2019, it was brought back in the form of Azure Kinect Developer Kit. “As the needs of our customers and partners evolve, we regularly update our products to best support them. 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,” Microsoft’s Swati Mehta wrote on the company’s Tech Community.

The Kinect camera launched as an accessory for Microsoft's Xbox 360 gaming console. Kinect technology lived on in Microsoft's HoloLens 2 mixed reality headset. Early this year, Microsoft laid off the team that had been working on a Mixed Reality Toolkit, which was done as part of a larger job-cutting phase.