Despite underwhelming sales of Kinect Sports Rivals, a Kinect-less Xbox One and a round of layoffs, Microsoft pledges it will continue to support Rare.

Eurogamer reports that Microsoft remains adamant in its support of UK-based Rare after it has decided to sell the Xbox One console without the Kinect. Rare used the Kinect as the basis of its past three major titles, Kinect Sports, Kinect Sports Season 2 and Kinect Sports Rivals. Upon the announcement that the Xbox One would now be available without the camera sensor, some of Rare's members who specialized in Kinect support left the studio.

"We are very fortunate in having Rare and Lionhead in the UK as crown jewels of Microsoft Studios," said Phil Harrison, head of Microsoft Studios Europe. "Rare is working on a couple of things at the moment, which we will announce at the right time. But I'm really excited by the things they're doing and I believe you will be as well when you hear about them.

"Rare is an incredible talent and they have some very very ambitious plans for the future and we're supporting them in every way we can."

Back in March, Rare senior studio director Craig Duncan told Eurogamer the following:

"Our goal as a studio is to always make great quality games. What you're saying is, will Rare always make Kinect games? What I'm saying is, we will come up with great game ideas and we'll look at the platform that makes the most sense for those game ideas to be on."

Following abysmal sales figures of Kinect Sports Rivals, a number of layoffs were given throughout the studio this past May. Despite these major setbacks, we're glad to see that Microsoft announced that it will still support Rare, which has been a subsidiary company of Microsoft Studios since 2002.

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