Kinect launched last November in Australia without voice controls. At the time, Microsoft told us we’d see it by February/March. Last week, we discovered that the trial had ended last year. And today, Mark from Kotaku has gotten Microsoft to confirm that we’ll see the tech rolled out in Australia by the end of the year.
Speaking to Jeremy Hinton from Microsoft, Serrels managed to wrangle an explanation out of the previously tight-lipped Redmond company:
“Voice Control is a very significant technical endeavour,” began Jeremy. “Every single time we do a new language we have to start from scratch.
“I know the perception is that English is English but it’s really not. I can turn on the US or the UK dashboard and it works – but it works to a certain degree.
“From our perspective we have a quality bar. This feature is huge part of our vision moving forward. It has to work and it has to work all the time.”
Hinton wouldn’t put a time frame on the update, but guaranteed this year. He also confirmed Zune Video Marketplace control using voice control would work in Australia, but wouldn’t confirm that you could control Foxtel on Xbox using the technology.
Go and read the Kotaku piece for more info.
[Kotaku]