A new product page on Xbox.com has revealed that the much touted Kinect-powered Xbox One voice commands will only be available in 5 of the 13 launch countries.
Way down below a long list of things that the Xbox One does better than anything else on the market –and an equally long list of “facts” that explain Microsoft’s numerous reversals — a tiny disclaimer announces the news with the following statement:
“Xbox voice commands will not be available in all markets on the product release date. Voice commands will be available at launch in US, UK, CA, FR, and DE.”
Based on Microsoft’s latest launch plans, this means that Xbox One voice commands will not be available in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and New Zealand when the console is released this November.
This is a very interesting list for several reasons, but there are two that really stand out. First and foremost is that Australia and Ireland will not have access to voice controls, even though they are both English speaking countries. The other thing to note is that Microsoft did not make it a priority to include Spanish localization, despite the large number of Spanish speaking people who live in the US — not to mention Mexico and Spain.
At the very least we can say that this news is consistent with Microsoft’s Xbox One marketing strategy of making grand announcements and then slowly reversing and/or limiting their scope as we get closer to the console’s launch.
