In an interview with Ars Technica, Microsoft's Head of Xbox Phil Spencer confirmed that efforts to offer a no-Kinect edition of Xbox One began as soon as he joined the Xbox team five weeks ago and that today’s out-of-nowhere announcement was meant to “get the product and the choice in front of consumers as soon as possible.”

Beginning June 9, Xbox One consoles without Kinect sensors will be available at retail for $399, dropping the system’s current retail price by $100. (Pre-orders of the new SKU have already gone live at Amazon and Best Buy.) Consoles that include Kinect will still be manufactured, and while Spencer couldn’t confirm what percentage of produced systems will be decoupled from Kinect, “we’re building as many of both as we can,” he said. “Over time, [the total percentage] will play out as consumers make their decisions.”

When pressed about Microsoft’s repeated, stubborn statements in the past about Kinect being an essential part of the Xbox One, Spencer countered that consumer response proved more important. “We have spent thousands of hours in engineering to make sure voice, gestures, and even IR for TV work great, but when a consumer walks in the store—$399 is a point we hear from consumers that they want Xbox at,” Spencer said. “I wanted to make sure players were heard.”

In August, Microsoft announced that the Xbox One would no longer require a constant Kinect connection to function, reversing course on the system’s original, unpopular plan in light of privacy complaints. Spencer says it was this long-ago move that set today’s announcement into motion.

“When we made that decision last summer, engineering work had to go into the platform to make sure the box would run without Kinect plugged in, and that was an enabler for this decision,” Spencer said. “It’s been five weeks since I was made head of Xbox, and at that time, Yusuf Medhi and I—we’re running the program together as partners now—and we began spending a lot of time looking at the list of opportunities for us.”

That list also included removing the Xbox Live Gold paywall for media apps like Netflix, Hulu, and ESPN and expanding the Xbox 360’s Games for Gold freebie program to Xbox One.

Spencer insisted that Microsoft’s internal Kinect roadmap has not changed and that the small number of Kinect-heavy games launched or announced thus far did not factor into Xbox’s announcement today. He also cited a surge in Kinect-specific activity in Xbox One apps such as Skype and Twitch.

“We want to continue to increase the sensor’s accuracy, along with an expansion of international voice modeling and the robustness of skeleton tracking and gesture control,” Spencer said. “That’s something we’re working on with developers who are focusing on gesture games because that can always get better.”

Harmonix, the creator of the Kinect-exclusive Dance Central series, offered a statement in support of the decision as it continues work on the Xbox One Kinect-exclusive Fantasia: Music Evolved. “As avid gamers, we’re excited for fans to have more choices out there,” Harmonix told Ars. “As game makers, this platform change doesn’t affect our strategy—it reinforces that we must continue to focus on building innovative, compelling, and well-designed motion experiences to motivate consumers to buy our games.”

The non-Kinect SKU will launch without any packed-in games or download codes, unlike recent Xbox One bundles that have included popular games such as Titanfall, but Spencer hinted at a “bundling strategy that you’ll see play out between now and the holiday season.” Spencer couldn’t confirm a release date for a standalone Xbox One Kinect, and that also goes for the previously announced Kinect coming to Windows.

“This decision in the long run will give more people a Kinect sensor,” Spencer said. “Now, people can join Xbox One sooner and add Kinect at a later time.”