Xbox Gaming in South Africa

A couple of weeks back, rumour broke out that Kinect would not feature any voice control support at launch. Microsoft quickly denied this, but remained somewhat vague about localised support in non-English territories.

Speaking to Eurogamer Spain earlier today, however, Microsoft confirmed that only American English, British English, Japanese and Mexican Spanish will be supported at Kinect's launch this November, and that the voice control feature would be disabled with console region-locking in other territories until additional localised language support is released starting "Spring 2011" (April/May).

Taking this further, Lazygamer contacted Microsoft South Africa for clarification on whether or not Kinect voice control support would be available here, what with English being one of our official languages and everything.

"No – it won’t be available at launch, there is no communication at the moment saying when it will be rolled out in SA," responds Yvette van Rooyen. "However you will be able to name your animal in Kinectimals via voice recognition."

So, apparently you won't be able to turn your Xbox on and off with the indomitable power of your voice yet, but you can totally call your pet tiger Jeanpant in the meantime.

It seems extremely odd that English-speaking regions would be locked out of, well, English-speaking, and will only increase the number of imports seen from "English-speaking" regions such as the United Kingdom. While we understand that accents play a role in voice recognition, they could at least let us give it a go.