News Xbox One voice commands only work in five markets at launch

The Xbox One's voice command functionality will only be operational in five markets at the console's launch.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2013/08/30/xbox-one-voice-commands-only-work-in-five-m/1

 

perfectly understandable, it takes years to develop voice recognition, even then it isn't perfect at the moment, my car has it for when making calls and writing texts, some of the stuff it reads back are comical, and I've been told I am well spoken.

 

I find it strange that they go for UK, USA, and Canada, but not Australia/NZ/South Africa etc. Surely it takes much less tweaking!

 

This product just screams rushed out of the door, its like they were not expecting a ps4 launch and have now had to rush develop a console to counter it.

Considering they are only launching it in a few countries voice support should be guarenteed for the launch group.

 

I'm surprised they go for the UK, the regional accents have got to be a nightmare...

 

Bing or Google voice search can understand even my accent, so i wonder why to restrict it to regions instead of languages... I guess MS fears this happening :

 

As if anybody is going to faff around with voice commands anyway, its just a gimmick

 

Actually, I've often found that if it's suitably accurate, it can be a nice feature. The issue is that it takes a while to get used to using it. I enabled it on my old mac and wrote whole a load of commands that I could use in photoshop etc. I found that after a couple of weeks (partly me getting used to the machine, and it getting used to me) it just seemed natural to switch tools by saying "Brush" or "Fill" etc. That might sound really trivial, but when using a wacom, I found not having to use a keyboard for many shortcuts nor having to drag the cursor around (it's an A3 tablet) was really useful.

As for using commands for a console. It's just a handy little thing so you don't constantly need a controller/remote nearby. I can never find the damn things or I can never put them in a practical place when I'm lying down on the sofa watching a movie. As for use withing games, yeah I sort of agree that it's a gimmick currently, certainly doesn't add to my experience anyway. Unless it's used for say "Mute xxPwNaGe223xx" which would be good and useful, rather than having to go through menus or hope the developer was sensible and directly assigned a button to it. Being able to do that during a game would be much simpler than faffing around with any menu, even with a direct button.

 

wonder how it will cope with an irate scouser

 

Probably about as well as any of us can...

 

Theyre probably playing it super safe.

Lets hope it wasnt designed by the same people behind Siri or the Scots will be having a hard time!

 

Well the first Kinect couldn't cope with a calm Welshman with only a slight welsh accent (me... actually, my accent changes depending on who I've been talking to so there was probably no hope of it working properly for me anyway), So I'm holding little hope that the 2nd will be any better.

 

So true.

 

It is very much a gimmick, completely agreed on that behalf.

How many of us can honestly hold up our hands and say "I will use these features on a regular basis"?

I find it stupid to be honest. Just like the commands you can say to a Samsung 8 series SMART TV. What in all honesty is the point...? I have a remote for that. LOL.