One of the most under talked about Kinect features has been it’s ability to distinguish voice commands and how that may make us all look like real tossers in our living rooms come November.
I have never been able to get voice commands to work properly and usually end up shouting at the stupid phone for ages while trying to avoid moving my finger to make that important call.
But back to the point, MCV reported yesterday that the Kinect voice ability would not be enabled at launch and would arrive sometime after that. Apparently this information was given to them by Microsoft but a short time later Microsoft head office refuted the claim.
They insisted that the voice ability would be available at launch as anticipated.
It’s possible that only English would be available at launch with other languages coming at a later date which would explain the miscommunication as it appeared to be Microsoft Germany who made the initial claim.
They also claimed that the Kinect video chat wouldn’t be available at launch which would be a disappointment as I am looking forward to using that to connect with distant family, Skype works fine for now but it requires that we all gather around the computer which just isn’t ideal.
Source: MCV
Last Updated: August 25, 2010
RSA-Ace
August 25, 2010 at 09:35
Did you guys try out the voice commands at E3? How’d South African English do? I often find, to get voice commands to work, you need to put a bit of an american twang in your voice – not ideal but definitely workable.
Gavin Mannion
August 25, 2010 at 09:54
No the voice commands were not testable at E3… well not for us at least
Bobby Kotick
August 25, 2010 at 11:23
The truth might be somewhere in the middle, it’s possible that it might not launch with voice support. Microsoft might just want to get Kinect out on the market, ship a few copies, or test the waters (so to speak) and see whether it’ll be sustainable.
Sam
August 25, 2010 at 19:16
There will be voice command at launch for most countries, but not all. On Twitter I’ve been following one of the programmers working on voice control for Kinect for the past few months. She’s been saying it’s very hard work getting voice control working with all these foreign languages and the most difficult project they’ve had thus far working on Kinect. She’s been working very long days according to her posts.
beta tester
August 31, 2010 at 21:10
hi im a beta teter of this product and they have still not sorted out the voice,
at least its not listening to me anyway lol
beta tester
September 1, 2010 at 04:59
ha ha joking lol y dont u just all wait for another 2 months and u can see it all 4 ya self 😀