Xbox One voice commands down to just 5 countries at launch?


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http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=664637

 

So, Microsoft has put up another page on Xbox.com promoting the Xbone as they do. (link)
 
What's interesting is the small print right at the bottom, specifically point six:
 
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.
 
Excuse me while I state the obvious, but I'm fairly sure that's not all of the 13 countries that the Xbone is launching in.

 

 

I think a delay to 2014 would do the Xbox One a world of good tbh so Microsoft can actually get things ready. Everything seems rushed and confused. Not that they would want to give the PS4 that much of a head start though.

 

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So goes with MS' position that delay is because of Localization and not yield issues. This is hardly surprising.

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If I was at MS, this would be a tough call to make.

 

First of all, delaying to 2014 is a non option. 

 

So it comes down to releasing just in the regions where localization is complete.  So if we assume that is the hold up, then that was why the cut it back to 8 regions. 

 

Now they are looking at their current progress for those 8 regions and seeing that they may not have voice commands done for all 8 by launch.  They probably think its unwise to reduce the number of regions any further, so they have decided to roll out the update for the missing regions as it gets done.

 

Personally, I think they are right to not release in regions that cant access all of the X1s features, especially one that is so integrated as voice commands.  Even if you hate the feature, MS cannot go by your opinion.  Voice commands are spreading across many markets and there are plenty of people that like using it when it works as expected.  If MS wants it to be an advantage of the X1, it needs to work correctly from the first day a person buys the console.  If you mar that launch experience, you could damage the value of the console.

 

Some say that they should just release it everywhere in English and then roll out updates later, but you can't tell me that potential customers in those regions won't have a poorer experience because of that.  In that scenario, the voice commands wouldn't be useful at all.

 

If I was in a country not getting an X1 during the first wave launch, then I would consider importing it or just waiting depending on what they announce for further launches.  If I'm not interested in an X1, then none of this matters, but if I am, then I would consider the above options. 

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If I was at MS, this would be a tough call to make.

 

First of all, delaying to 2014 is a non option. 

 

So it comes down to releasing just in the regions where localization is complete.  So if we assume that is the hold up, then that was why the cut it back to 8 regions. 

 

Now they are looking at their current progress for those 8 regions and seeing that they may not have voice commands done for all 8 by launch.  They probably think its unwise to reduce the number of regions any further, so they have decided to roll out the update for the missing regions as it gets done.

 

Personally, I think they are right to not release in regions that cant access all of the X1s features, especially one that is so integrated as voice commands.  Even if you hate the feature, MS cannot go by your opinion.  Voice commands are spreading across many markets and there are plenty of people that like using it when it works as expected.  If MS wants it to be an advantage of the X1, it needs to work correctly from the first day a person buys the console.  If you mar that launch experience, you could damage the value of the console.

 

Some say that they should just release it everywhere in English and then roll out updates later, but you can't tell me that potential customers in those regions won't have a poorer experience because of that.  In that scenario, the voice commands wouldn't be useful at all.

 

If I was in a country not getting an X1 during the first wave launch, then I would consider importing it or just waiting depending on what they announce for further launches.  If I'm not interested in an X1, then none of this matters, but if I am, then I would consider the above options. 

 

I've given MS a ton of passes on things... but this is unacceptable...

They knew that Kinect would be integral to the Xbox One.

During development all they had to do was get 3-4 people from the small regions and have them speak.

They could have done this, without letting on what it was for.

 

Now this gets no excuse. Especially when all you need is a high end sound booth for this.

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http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=664637

 

 

I think a delay to 2014 would do the Xbox One a world of good tbh so Microsoft can actually get things ready. Everything seems rushed and confused. Not that they would want to give the PS4 that much of a head start though.

 

So rather than launching in 13 countries in 2013 you think they shouldn't launch in any? Makes good business sense  :rolleyes: /s

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I've given MS a ton of passes on things... but this is unacceptable...

They knew that Kinect would be integral to the Xbox One.

During development all they had to do was get 3-4 people from the small regions and have them speak.

They could have done this, without letting on what it was for.

 

Now this gets no excuse. Especially when all you need is a high end sound booth for this.

 

 

Then something went wrong and it required more work.

 

Look, why are we assuming MS is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs? 

 

You seem to think all they had to do was pull in a couple guys off the street, record them and be done with it.

 

I have no idea how the process works, but I get the impression that most of you don't know either. Whatever the process is, MS feels they don't have enough time to meet the first wave launch date.  I get tired of people getting all up in arms against these companies when they have to delay something like this.  I get that many people are jaded and assume the company is lying about the reasons it has to delay, but sometimes they are actually telling the truth and sometimes problems happen during production that lead to delays.

 

You think MS wants to delay the roll out?  They are obviously working on it and something required more time than they had.  If you want to call them out for it that's fine, but its hard to be specific here. Cal them out for being too slow or for whatever issue caused the delay I guess.

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Then something went wrong and it required more work.

Look, why are we assuming MS is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs?

You seem to think all they had to do was pull in a couple guys off the street, record them and be done with it.

I have no idea how the process works, but I get the impression that most of you don't know either. Whatever the process is, MS feels they don't have enough time to meet the first wave launch date. I get tired of people getting all up in arms against these companies when they have to delay something like this. I get that many people are jaded and assume the company is lying about the reasons it has to delay, but sometimes they are actually telling the truth and sometimes problems happen during production that lead to delays.

You think MS wants to delay the roll out? They are obviously working on it and something required more time than they had. If you want to call them out for it that's fine, but its hard to be specific here. Cal them out for being too slow or for whatever issue caused the delay I guess.

I get what your saying... I do..

But localization should gone into the plans during very early stages. And yes you can have that found proper speaking people from their respective regions and bring them to a booth, to speak. All without having to give away why it was happening. I'm in the US so does not effect me whatsoever. But I want the World to experience the X1 together.

If Kinect was a known given from the beginning, then localization for it should of started ASAP...

If I plan on making a product where voice recognition is a known given (especially a global product) localization would have started very early.

But I can be dead wrong.

You are pretty knowledgable on this (not being sarcastic either :-) ) so I would say, you know better than I would...

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I only wish we knew what led to this delay. 

 

I have zero knowledge on the process on how this works.  If anyone does have experience, please share your experience.

 

I have a hard time thinking MS just started the localization now, it makes me think they ran into some kind of issues during the process that required more time to get right.  Heck it might not have anything to do with getting recording or whatever, it could be a software issue, something to do with how Kinect or the included headset processes each language and the wide variety of accents that will need to be accounted for.

 

So maybe its a software issue, not an issue of collected data.

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I get what your saying... I do..

But localization should gone into the plans during very early stages. And yes you can have that found proper speaking people from their respective regions and bring them to a booth, to speak. All without having to give away why it was happening. I'm in the US so does not effect me whatsoever. But I want the World to experience the X1 together.

If Kinect was a known given from the beginning, then localization for it should of started ASAP...

If I plan on making a product where voice recognition is a known given (especially a global product) localization would have started very early.

But I can be dead wrong.

You are pretty knowledgable on this (not being sarcastic either :-) ) so I would say, you know better than I would...

 

Localization probably did start from day one but it's not a friggin cake walk. It's hard as hell to properly localize software without things going wrong.  I know firsthand.  It's a heck of a lot more than "getting 3-4 people from one place to come and speak".  It can take years to properly localize all of your software for just a handful of countries depending on how complex it is, and given we're talking about something that has to recognize your voice and translate it appropriately into commands that need to be acted on, it's quite complex.

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The delay sucks, but if that is the cost for getting it done properly and it means people have a reliable experience from day one, then fine. 

 

Since Sony is not concerned about this aspect of control, they don't have to devote any time on it, or at least they can work on it at their leisure.  So its not like we can point to them and say 'hey, look at them, they are launching in more regions and were able to achieve what MS cant in the same time'. That's not a knock against them, its just one of the differences in the two feature lists.

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There is a happy medium though... In some of those regions the citizens do tend to speak multiple languages...

Hopefully that can work for them till localization is complete.

Wish I knew multiple languages... :-(

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Yeah, but I get why MS wouldn't try to just release the console everywhere and just support English or a handful of languages at launch.  There are some that could use it just fine that way, but its pretty unfair to expect customers in say Japan to use voice commands in English.

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http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=79001409&postcount=520

1KlcMyB.gif

(thanks Garrett 2U)

First, people should understand ? I don?t always know every detail happening with the program. Even though I run Product Planning (I'm not in PR!), that means we set the stage early for the features and HW, but a lot happens going through the development process. I stay very close as we approach launch, but I don?t always know the specifics when things change, so sometimes (frequently) I have to ask someone on the team. I also don?t run PR or Marketing, so I don?t see every piece of material that makes it to the public.  In this case, there was an inconsistency between some small print on Xbox.com, and what I understood was happening ? so I went to get more details.

 

Turns out the answer to this question is? complicated. It?s been an education for me as I?ve been looking into it.

 

There is no way that I could do justice to it in a post, so the marketing team is working on a chart that gives clarity on what locales, languages, and voice features are available in each country. Trying to write it down would be confusing. Stay tuned for a more detailed explanation, but just to give clarity:

 

In November

-    We will launch in 13 geos

-    10 of those geos will support some voice features

-    We support 8 languages

 

The 8 Languages at Launch are:

1)      English ? US

2)      English ? GB (WW)

3)      French

4)      Spanish ? MX

5)      Spanish ? ES

6)      Italian

7)      German

8)      Portuguese

 

NOW ? the nuance to this is that some voice *features* won?t be available in all countries right away. ?Xbox On?, for instance, is only available in 5 (hence the confusion on Xbox.com in the small print).

 

BigDug13 ? the FAQ is correct, for launch. When you choose a language for your console, you will be offered the list of countries it is supported in. Using your example, if you choose Italy as your language, you only get Italian. We will continue to add more supported combinations over time. For example in Canada we will support English and French.  The opportunity to ?mix-and-match? languages and countries is something we?re looking to do post-launch.

 

Again, sorry for all the confusion on this. Look for a more detailed explanation coming. Will most likely come through Xbox Wire, or Xbox.com.

He also pretty much admitted that the DRM 180 has ######ed up their schedule.

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Few more

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=79006145&postcount=543

That's why it took me so long to get back to everyone. I got a very interesting refresher on how Voice works in the system, which parts are local, which parts use "the cloud" (back-end LIVE services) to process, etc.

It was actually really interesting, but summarizing it all up in text would be confusing. We decided a grid was easier, so the Marketing team is working on it.

<editorializing> - when I look at the chart, it feels like the vast majority of what we have talked about as voice support (like "Xbox, go to Ryse") works in all 8 languages. There are handful of exceptions.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=79008345&postcount=567

Some of the sophisticated voice search strings (think catalog searching for music or movies) will only work online. We can't locally store the name of every movie, actor, director, genre, etc.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=79010049&postcount=583

No, it does not.

^^ (Answer to if voice control requires XBL Gold)
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so that mean, some poor brits in spain, must use espanola to operates their xb1 ?

 

 

Well it was mentioned that they would offer multiple language options and that you could choose the language when setting up the console.  That would seem to say that you could choose Spanish regardless of where you are in the world.

 

 

Its nice to see someone from MS sharing more info on this.  This is the kind of stuff that keeps us in the loop and maybe understand the issue better.

 

One interesting bit that I wanted to comment on was the fact that some of the voice features require an online connection.  I hope no one takes that the wrong way, its actually common for voice systems that tap into searches for media, etc.  Siri relies on an internet connection, as does most mobile voice command systems.  All that means is that there is even more evidence of how integrated voice controls are and why MS is determined to roll out the proper language support on day one when launching in any region.

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You should note that for the languages where it lists English - GB (WW), it has the (WW) next to it.  I'm going out on a limb here and saying that stands for World Wide, so you can pick that as your language regardless of your country locale.  So you pick English- GB if you're in Spain, but if you pick Spanish then you're locked to picking Spain as your country locale.   The example he gave was for Italian, if you picked that as your language then the system will only let you pick Italy as it's country locale etc.    People who big English GB should be able to set any country as their locale without issue though.

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... (WW)...

The example he gave was for Italian, if you picked that as your language then the system will only let you pick Italy as it's country locale etc.

People who big English GB should be able to set any country as their locale without issue though.

now that you mention it, the US 'language' doesn't have the WW tag.
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now that you mention it, the US 'language' doesn't have the WW tag.

 

That's no real surprise, while they do learn "English" in lots of countries like here in Greece where I live, it's UK English, and not US English.  I think the same applies to other countries as well, which is why English-GB is the World Wide supported language on the system.   Unless WW means something totally different and we're going on about nothing, lol.

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Localization probably did start from day one but it's not a friggin cake walk. It's hard as hell to properly localize software without things going wrong.  I know firsthand.  It's a heck of a lot more than "getting 3-4 people from one place to come and speak".  It can take years to properly localize all of your software for just a handful of countries depending on how complex it is, and given we're talking about something that has to recognize your voice and translate it appropriately into commands that need to be acted on, it's quite complex.

 

I don't know where you work but if it takes years for you to do localization I'm surprised your still in business, Also Microsoft have products which they sell globally (example Windows OS) it really should be as easy as using its dictionary to localize the xbox one to different countries then going through the menus and options to try find any discrepancies considering the console UI's don't have many words in them it shoudlve been pretty quickly.

 

Now onto voice recognition, sure if the console worked like Siri and could understand hundreds of thousands of words I'd agree that it would take awhile, but how many commands are there on the Xbox One? Xbox On, Xbox Off, TV, Channel, Game maybe 10-20? that shouldn't take very long at all.

 

The 8 Languages at Launch are:

1)      English ? US

2)      English ? GB (WW)

3)      French

4)      Spanish ? MX

5)      Spanish ? ES

6)      Italian

7)      German

8)      Portuguese

 

 

English GB and English US are pretty much the same, also Spanish MX, Spanish ES and Portuguese. Which means 5 Languages (1. English, 2. Spanish, 3. French, 4. Italian and 5/ German) like the Xbox.com page states. 

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I don't know where you work but if it takes years for you to do localization I'm surprised your still in business, Also Microsoft have products which they sell globally (example Windows OS) it really should be as easy as using its dictionary to localize the xbox one to different countries then going through the menus and options to try find any discrepancies considering the console UI's don't have many words in them it shoudlve been pretty quickly.

Now onto voice recognition, sure if the console worked like Siri and could understand hundreds of thousands of words I'd agree that it would take awhile, but how many commands are there on the Xbox One? Xbox On, Xbox Off, TV, Channel, Game maybe 10-20? that shouldn't take very long at all.

English GB and English US are pretty much the same, also Spanish MX, Spanish ES and Portuguese. Which means 5 Languages (1. English, 2. Spanish, 3. French, 4. Italian and 5/ German) like the Xbox.com page states.

Ummm the console doesn't recognize specific commands, it has FULL voice recognition, this is then used to recognize specific commands. This iswhythird party developers can use kinect to add any voice command they want.

It's based on the excellent voice recognition they added to windows with Vista.

So no. It's isn't some weekend job. Many European languages specialist in each country has been working for many many years to get good speech recognition for the language. Add in the fact that dialects in many European languages vary far more from each other than the minor speech differences in English dialects.

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I don't know where you work but if it takes years for you to do localization I'm surprised your still in business, Also Microsoft have products which they sell globally (example Windows OS) it really should be as easy as using its dictionary to localize the xbox one to different countries then going through the menus and options to try find any discrepancies considering the console UI's don't have many words in them it shoudlve been pretty quickly.

You have no idea what you're talking about. If you think localization just means translating words, you're way off base. And I work for a billion dollar IT company that is a national leader in our industry and gaining customers worldwide. You don't just flick a switch and say, "oh, we're good to go in en-GB".

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Now onto voice recognition, sure if the console worked like Siri and could understand hundreds of thousands of words I'd agree that it would take awhile, but how many commands are there on the Xbox One? Xbox On, Xbox Off, TV, Channel, Game maybe 10-20? that shouldn't take very long at all.

 

 

Do we know how integrated voice commands are?  Notice that MS mentioned that some of the voice commands require an active internet connection, which is something you also need to use something like Siri.  It sounds like to me like they are doing something more than just handling a handful of commands.

 

I think one reason its hard to understand the situation is due to the fact that we don't really know how deeply voice is integrated.  MS keeps saying it is, but we haven't seen them layout all of its functions.

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