Report: Kinect Will Only Understand Americans, Brits, Japanese & Mexicans

Oh dear. It’s not just Spaniards who won’t be able to control Kinect with their voices when the peripheral launches. It’s everyone who doesn’t live in the US, Mexico or United Kingdom.

https://lastchance.cc/report-kinect-doesnt-speak-spanish-it-speaks-mexican-5627036%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E

Eurogamer has confirmed with Microsoft that when Kinect is released in November, no languages from mainland Europe will be supported. So if you’re in France, or Italy, or Germany, or Switzerland, or the Netherlands, or Poland, or the Czech Republic, or…well, you get the idea. Live in any of those places and you won’t be able to get around your Xbox 360 using the power of the human voice.

The kicker is that even if you live in those places and speak fluent English, it still won’t work, as your Kinect will be locked to the same region as your Xbox 360.

It’s not just Europe being left out, either. The only languages (or, in two cases, accents) Kinect will support in November will be English (USA), English (UK), Japanese and Mexican Spanish. Everyone else, even Canadians and presumably Aussies and Kiwis as well, will have to wait until an update in Spring 2011 (or, for Antipodeans, Autumn 2011).

I don’t quite understand this. How can Kinect be programmed to recognise accents from New York to Alabama, Sussex to Scotland, and somehow not understand Canadians in between?

As someone who was really only looking forward to Kinect for the voice recognition stuff, and also someone who does not live in the US, UK, Mexico or Japan, consider me slightly disappointed.

No Euro Kinect voice rec until spring [Eurogamer]

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