Australian gamers are frustrated by the lack of voice support on the Xbox 360. A feature that launched late last year for the US and UK Xbox owners, it was promised for ‘early 2011’, but its mid-year and we’re still waiting. Microsoft’s reason – the Australian accent is complex and requires time to add proper support. Yes we’d prefer it to work correctly when the feature arrives, but seriously, how hard could it be ?
At the bottom of a Forza 4 press release from E3, it listed “Kinect Voice capability scheduled for Australia before the end of 2011.” This means we may see games that use voice commands, ship before voice support is rolled out to Australia. Pretty ridiculous right ?
The situation gets even more intriguing when you take into consideration that Windows 7 features voice recognition which isn’t switched off in Australia. The latest puzzling piece of the equation is that Kinect Fun Labs, now available on your Xbox 360, in Australia, DOES support voice commands. In my experience it does a great job.
There is another dashboard update on the way that ads full Kinect support to the entire interface, not just in the Kinect hub. It’s due around September and is the most likely time Australian’s will get the overdue feature.
Image credit: Microsoft
