Microsoft has insisted it has no intention of selling Xbox One without Kinect.

It is thought that without the new Kinect, which lets players control games and navigate the Xbox One user interface with voice recognition and motion, the Xbox One would be considerably cheaper, but Microsoft has so far resisted calls from some quarters to sell a version of its next-gen console without the sensor.

Speaking with Eurogamer yesterday ahead of the announcement of the first Xbox One price cut, Xbox UK marketing chief Harvey Eagle said Microsoft was sticking with Kinect because the company feels it's "integral to the Xbox One experience".

"[A Kinect-less Xbox One] is not in our plans at all," he stressed.

"As we've said from the very beginning, we believe Kinect is an absolutely integral part of the Xbox One experience."

Eagle pointed to Xbox One's Upload Studio, which lets players record, edit and publish game clips to Xbox Live, as an example of how Kinect is, in his words, integral to the Xbox One.

"Look at all the thousands and thousands of game clips that have been posted by gamers to Upload Studio, of their gaming highlights, captured by speaking the words 'Xbox record that', which has already become part of Xbox vocabulary," Eagle said.

"It's a really great example of how Kinect makes the experience on Xbox One even better."

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Currently there are only a couple of Xbox One games that require Kinect: Rare's Kinect Sports Rivals, which is out now in a demo form, and Xbox Fitness.

Eagle said that the E3 trade show in June will be where Microsoft will make announcements about Xbox One games due out in time for Christmas.

"Obviously E3 is a key moment in time where we'll make a bunch of announcements about what's coming up in the months ahead of E3, and particularly for Christmas," he said. "So expect to hear much more from us at E3.

"We've made announcements about games we're very excited about. Project Spark is going to be a very interesting game. I'd also mention Sunset Overdrive, which is looking very interesting. There's a very strong pipeline of games coming in the future. Titanfall is the one on the nearest horizon and everyone is rightly excited about that."