Ever wondered what an Xbox smartwatch would look like? Well, wonder no more – newly uncovered images show that a gaming-branded wearable was in development at Microsoft HQ.
The images show the long-rumored (and long since cancelled) Microsoft smartwatch that was thought to be in active development around 2013.
It featured Xbox branding and favored a heavily-bezelled square watch face, which had been pencilled in for release in 2015.
Kinecting your wrist to your heart
There's little to go on in terms of what operating system or apps the device would have run, but what looks like a heart-rate sensor sits on the rear. This could have given the smartwatch a fitness focus, which would align with the fact that Microsoft at the time was heavily pushing the Kinect motion sensor's potential for fitness and exercise tracking.
It's possible that, what with Xbox branding, the watch would have offered a gamified approach to shedding the pounds.
Elsewhere, there appears to be a clasp for charging, which seems to take its cues from the magnetic power connector present in the Microsoft Surface tablet lines, which are there employed to juice up the removable physical keyboards.
While the watch never materialized, Microsoft briefly dabbled in the wearable space with its ill-fated Microsoft Band wearable, which itself was eventually discontinued.
For now, however, the company seems more interested in head-mounted Mixed Reality wearables instead.
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Via SuomiMobiili
