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Microsoft Studios shutters Xbox Fitness at-home workouts
Xbox Fitness has provided an at-home workout with the help of the trusty game console and Microsoft's Kinect since 2013. However, the exercise option won't be around much longer. Microsoft Studios announced that the console-driven workouts would be shuttered July 1, 2017, citing the effort required to ship regular updates to keep the gym routines fresh. The company says it has "given much consideration to the reality updating the service regularly in order to sustain it."
'Xbox Fitness' no longer requires the Kinect
The Kinect, once such an integral part of Microsoft's Xbox One story, just lost a big toehold. You no longer need the depth sensor for Xbox Fitness, a key non-gaming app. The device brings gamification to workouts and forces you to think about form, so the app is more like a streaming service without it. However, dropping the requirement certainly opens it up to more users. Folks who compete with friends might also be disappointed to know that non-Kinect rivals still get a score just for watching the videos. Kinect users can score higher, though, and new workout titles will continue to support the camera. There's no word on whether Microsoft might offer smartphone body tracking like it does with Just Dance Now.
You can now browse Reddit from your Xbox One
The internet's front page is coming to an Xbox One near you. ReddX is what Microsoft is calling the first ever Reddit app for TVs and it'll allow you to browse through r/gaming or the rest of the site while you're, you know, playing games, and it's rolling out today. A post on Xbox Wire notes that there are media-specific achievements to unlock that are named after gaming memes (Scumbag EA, perhaps?) and there's even a customized main page. More than that, you'll be able to upvote, comment and perform any of the site's functions while holding an Xbox One controller or SmartGlass device. You can also control GIFs, view image galleries and even watch embedded YouTube videos without leaving the app, and, because it's on the Xbox One it can of course be snapped in alongside something else and is controllable with voice. To show off just how it all works, Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb wrote a post to Reddit directly from the application.
Xbox Fitness official, brings famous trainers, personalized feedback to living room workouts
Microsoft's initial Kinect sensor might not have been awesome for first-person shooters, but it rocked for fitness games. Redmond is taking this one step further for its next-gen console with Xbox Fitness, a subscription-based service for the Xbox One. Xbox Fitness promises "instant, personalized feedback" on heart rate and form (thanks to the new Kinect's innards), and celebrity trainers include Jillian Michaels and Tony Horton. It's bringing P90X and Insanity workouts, too. The service will be free until December 2014 -- with Xbox Live Gold, of course -- but after that, Microsoft could be locking it behind two paywalls, according to a leaked test-page spotted by NeoGAF's ever-vigilant community. We've reached out to the company for confirmation on pricing and will update this post if we hear back. In the meantime remember: Shut up, focus and do the work.
