Microsoft to pull the plug on Xbox Fitness, offers no replacement to paying users

Microsoft has announced that they’re pulling the plug on the Xbox Fitness and all its content by July 1, 2017. Xbox Fitness was one of the main features touted by the company when launching the Xbox One in 2013. This comes relatively close to the announcement made in December last year which removed the previously mandatory requirement of having a Kinect sensor. “Given that the service relies on providing you with new and exciting content regularly, Microsoft has given much consideration to the reality of updating the service regularly in order to sustain it. Therefore, the decision has been made to scale back our support for Xbox Fitness over the next year, and we want to provide our users with a timeline of the changes you will see,” added Erica Bell while trying to address the reasons for pulling the application and related content to the app. The company has detailed a timeline to explain the different stages of the roll out to gradually phase out the ecosystem. According to the timeline, starting today the content for Xbox Fitness will no longer be available for purchase and from Dec 15, this year, the app will be removed from the ‘Free with Gold’ offerings. Finally on July 1, 2017, Xbox Fitness app and all it’s associated content will be removed and no longer be made available for usage. This move by Microsoft involving the removal of content that people have already paid for and without offering any way to take it offline or other alternatives has pissed users off. Many Xbox Fitness app users took to the official blog post expressing their displeasure regarding the announcement and how Xbox Fitness app was the only thing they were using and now there is no procedure to refund the amount invested in purchasing all the Fitness content. Microsoft is yet to comment on the feedback