The Kinect, the camera and microphone array once considered by Microsoft to be an incontrovertibly important piece of its new console, quickly fell out of the limelight once it stopped being sold with the latest Xbox One.

The sudden and near-complete disappearance of the console in everything from marketing to new game support to this week's E3 press conference certainly makes it seem that the peripheral is dead.

But that's not the case, says Shannon Loftis, general manager of global games publishing for Xbox.

"It's still an option for gamers and it still powers what's special about how you can navigate the dashboard," she said. "They wanted a choice and they got a choice."

The Kinect hasn't received the attention it once did, she added, because Microsoft is focusing on telling gamers about the games that are coming this fall and the things they've been so vocally asking for, like the recently announced Xbox 360 backward compatibility.

Kinect, she said, is still coming out for Windows 10, and there are unannounced games coming for the motion controller this fall. There are also unannounced games currently in development for Kinect internally at Microsoft, Loftis said.

"It's still a going concern," she said. "More creators than you might expect are now engaging with Kinect for Xbox One."