No Voice Support For Australian Kinect. For Now.

Kovacs 29 Comments

One for our antipodean readers. Though not the first time we’ve talked about Kinect’s limited accent support, it’s been confirmed by Australian site Games On Net that Kinect is unable to decipher the signature Aussie twang. A bizarre concept, if true.

Running the device’s voice set up feature down under, our cork-hatted gaming comrades are greeted with an error message informing them that their region is unsupported. Contacting Microsoft for confirmation, the official response is:

The voice support for Kinect will not be available at launch for Australia. It will be a function that will be available to Aussies, just not at launch.

No detail as to when this support will be patched in. It does present a funny premise, however. Do Microsoft literally have testers in a room screaming at Kinect, trying their damndest to confuse its inner workings with an assortment of weird and wonderful dialects? You bet they do.

Thanks JesseDeya

Tags:

Related stories from TSA

Microsoft Officially Discontinue The Kinect Adapter For Xbox One S And X
Microsoft Cease Production Of Kinect
No Kinect Adaptor To Be Included Or Offered Free With Xbox One X Purchases
Xbox One Kinect Sensor To Officially Be Available From October 7th

29 Comments

  1. strewth

  2. See there must be more to it than simple accents surely? When you look at some of the accents we have in the UK from Scouse to Geordie I don’t understand how it works with those but not an Aussie accent? What happens if an Aussie is living in the US or UK, does Kinect get confused? I doubt it – no other voice recognition works on accents they works on the words, and English is English – unless they’re planning to regionalise it so you say “G’day Xbox” to start it up or something…

    Delays in foreign language Countries I can understand, delays in English speaking Countries confuses the hell out of me!!!

    • It’s to do with the speech recognition. Accents and rural dialects all come with their own unique way of pronouncing certain words (as well as adding totally fabricated words to the mix).

      If Kinect is listening out for “hello” it’s going to suffer with “‘allo” if a particular region drops its aitches frequently. I know this is overly simplistic but Kinect has to allow for such deviations.

      Just like the police allow for my deviations.

      I’ve said too much.

      • News Flash: 99% Kinect returns in the merseyside area!

    • I agree with allof the above.

      • Damn space bar is broke! But yeah I don’t understand how it can work with all of the different UK accents,American accents but not an Aussie one.

  3. They should just have tested Kinect over in the UK. That would’ve taken care of nearly every accent and quirk in the English speaking world. Drongos.

  4. So it can’t recognize dark faces that well and now this … not good MS, not good

    • Aborigines must be especially crushed.

      I’ll get my coat.

      ;)

  5. What amazes me about this, or rather what does not amaze me about this considering it’s Microsoft we’re talking about here, is that they have waited until after the release or pretty damn soon close to it to tell the poor aussies that they won’t be getting this fuction which would surely have hindered sales. Sneaky and not at all ethical, yep that’s dear old MS.

  6. Apparently Microsoft has said it’s to do with accents and slang. Does the us/uk english version use slang for it’s voice commands?

    • “Xbox, innit.”

      • I ain’t never not heard of nuffin like that, or nuffin.

      • I Sooooooooooooooooooooooo can’t believe you just said that!

        And yes, Kinect would have to be well programmed to deal with accents to work in the Uk otherwise people way as well just buy a building brick to talk to.

      • For the record, the word “innit” is not used where I’m from. I do know the British people have a love/hate relationship with it, however.

      • We do, and I hate it!

  7. Hey whats the craic

    (I hate slangs and I`m glad Microsoft have battled these poisonous words)

    • slang and accents are different, you do know this right?

  8. So who will be the first to say it’s racist? :P

  9. but how much slang does it recognise elsewhere in the world?
    it’s just “xbox”, “stop”, “play” and the name of a few apps isn’t it?

    • I was confused by the mention of slang too. This is the full answer Microsoft gave one of the aussie websites…

      “We want to give Aussies the premium experience for Kinect,” claims Adam Pollington, Xbox Category Manager. “We could have launched with something substandard, but we wanted to deliver the best possible service.“Some methods of communication are straight forward, like hand gestures are the same, but voices are obviously different with accents and slang, not just across different countries, but within those countries. To implement more advanced controls we have to master all of these accents.”
      “It’s more about the time it takes to work it all in,” explains Adam. “It’s just a massive task to implement it all and, as we said before, we want to give Aussies the best premium service.”

  10. “Do Microsoft literally have testers in a room screaming at Kinect, trying their damndest to confuse its inner workings with an assortment of weird and wonderful dialects? You bet they do.”

    Youtube of this might be brilliant…

Comments are now closed for this post.