Xbox Gaming in South Africa

One of the much touted features of Xbox 360's motion controller Kinect is the ability to control your Xbox 360 through voice commands. Those living in the US, Canada (English), UK, Japan or Mexico have been happily doing so since Kinect launched earlier this month, however, the rest of us haven't been so lucky. According to Microsoft, we'll have to wait until additional localised language support is released sometime in Spring 2011 (April/May), even though English is our first language.

The good news is that you can in fact still use voice control outside of the designated countries, and it works just as well. After much testing with my own Kinect setup, I've found that it comes down to your Xbox 360's Locale setting, and/or Xbox LIVE locale. For example, if you set your Xbox 360's locale to UK or US, and don't sign into Xbox LIVE, voice commands work just fine. Logging into Xbox LIVE with a UK or US account also works, which means it's not ip restricted. It won't, however, work if you set your Xbox 360's locale to UK or US and then sign in with a South African Xbox LIVE account, as this obviously overrides the Xbox 360's local setting.

Try it out, and let us know if you have any problems navigating the Xbox 360 with voice commands. I for one found it worked perfectly, even with my South African accent.