Voice recognition Kinect not available on the European mainland until spring 2011

Microsoft’s Kinect voice recognition will only be available in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Mexico when it releases in November. Other countries will have to wait until spring 2011.

Microsoft confirmed this against Eurogamer. The languages ​​available will initially be UK and US English, Mexican Spanish and Japanese. Gamers who speak one of these languages ​​but don’t live in any of the countries mentioned will have to be patient; the Xbox 360’s region control makes it impossible to switch languages.

Microsoft has chosen the Mexican instead of the official version of Spanish because of the size of the market. The number of Mexican Spanish speakers in the United States and Mexico far exceeds the number of Spaniards. The same will apply to the different variants of English: Australian gamers, for example, will also have to wait until 2011. A screenshot from the Kinect beta, posted by Xboxygenalso shows a Canadian-English variant, but the availability of this at the release has not yet been confirmed by Microsoft.