Alright, so we all knew we were getting Kinect voice control for Xbox LIVE before the end of the year, but now we have a specific date and that date is December 6.
Hurray? Well, the time we’ve had to wait for this feature has been pretty stretched out to say the least, and I’d argue that most of us will rarely use voice control regardless. But it’s the principle of the thing!
According to a press release from Microsoft, “[t]he new dashboard is built from the ground up to take full advantage of voice control. People will be able to effortlessly navigate through their favourite entertainment on Xbox 360 using voice or gestures with Kinect for Xbox 360.”
It does, however, add the disclaimer that voice features will vary by region, but we called and confirmed with a Microsoft rep that this update does, in actual fact, add voice control functionality to Kinect for Australia.
So, finally, it’ll be here soon. Now we can all get used to completely forgetting it exists and use our controllers instead.
Neo-Kaiser
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 10:35 AMDoesn’t it already exist in Australia, they just disabled it for no reason?
Adam
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 10:38 AMWhat exactly can you say to the Xbox and what will it do? Is Voice such a big deal?
brent3000
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 1:08 PMFor example you can say “Xbox, Settings” and it goes to the settings or use Bing Search with kinect.
Boomer
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 10:43 AMu can control the whole dashboard with your voice. Even turn the console off with your voice. Its really cool!!!!
DG
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 10:45 AMIm in the beta testing, voice works fine, and the new dashboard is much better than the last, if you know what a windows phone OS, or the windows 8 beta looks like, its something similar ^_^
DG
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 10:50 AMhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_%28design_language%29
os42
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 1:10 PMMe too, and while I didn’t like it at first, it’s grown on me. A few gripes, most of which have been either forwarded to the feature team for the next iteration, or were “by design”, but in general a good interface for voice navigation. It’s really not designed to be navigated with a controller, so anyone that can’t use the voice commands (due to lack of hardware or region support) probably won’t like this update.
I’m in general against the whole Metro UI fad that Microsoft is pushing – it’s before its time. Good for touchscreens and voice control, but worse than useless for conventional input methods.
welbot
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 10:47 AMSo they release an update which lets us setup voice recognition, and not actually enable it to do anything? Nice move microsoft.. you could have told me that before I wasted an hour of my life fucking around trying to get my xbox to respond to anything… “XBOX……XBOX……XBOX…..WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN TO ME XBOX!!!!”
NegativeZero
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 10:50 AMThe shitty thing is that voice control has been active since Kinect launched, you just had to sign into a non-Australian account. :\
Gronk
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 11:12 AMCool! So now I can use my voice to navigate around all the marketing material that gets shoved down my throat even though I pay for the “premium” Gold service.
Aliasalpha
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 11:30 AM“Xbox, turn these feckin ads off!”
WiseHacker
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 11:50 AMXBox: (Hal voice) “I’m sorry, Aliasalpha. I cannot do that.”
James Mac
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 11:27 AMVideos of Mark going ‘Full Scottish’ or it didn’t happen.
Black Dahlia NZ
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 11:35 AMso does it work in NZ? has it ever
moloko
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 11:51 AMUsed it a while ago and it was pretty useless, maybe it might be good on the new dashboard
Gammah
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 12:09 PMAbout time oz get’s voice control :D
KRiSX
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 12:22 PMits cool but also needs some work… been playing with it in the beta
simon
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 3:05 PMwerent we meant to be getting abc iview with the update?