Despite a number of reports that have indicated or suggested that Microsoft was ditching the Kinect voice control at launch only to add it at some point later, these reports have now been confirmed by our sources as untrue. Microsoft does apparently plan to have the voice control Kinect experience for the Kinect Hub at launch.
We don’t know how people hear this stuff, but it would appear that a source in Europe indicated that this would be the case; but then Microsoft stepped in and took a very unusual step of issuing a statement confirming what our source had already confirmed to us.
The voice control is apparently one of the biggest draws to Kinect at the moment, and it did seem to capture the imagination at E3 during the demos. From our understanding, users will be able to use Kinect to issue voice commands via the Kinect Hub to navigate it to watch video and play music as well as perform a number of other tasks. The best part is that it will be part of the November Kinect update prior to release.
While word has it that a number of other small dashboard updates will be included in the November update, it seems that right now no one seems to know what those might be. Whispers suggest that the update will be mostly for Kinect, but a number of smaller fixes and updates will be included prior to a bigger update that is planned for early next year.
We don’t know who hears this stuff
David Stellmack
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