Xbox 720 Kinect to Include Siri-like Natural Voice Recognition: Report

Rumor would have it—and there's plenty of rumors going around these days—is that Microsoft's next Xbox, codenamed Durango, is set to include Siri-like functionality as a part of its new Kinect device. 

The existing Kinect supports a small amount of voice activation, by allowing users to play a game, or look something up on a search engine, but it doesn't come with software as versatile as Apple's Siri, which graces Apple's new iPhones and iPads. 

The Verge reports through sources of their own that Microsoft intends to greatly improve the functionality of the Kinect's speech recognition technology, which they say will support wake on voice, natural language detection, and speech-to-text. The publication has learned that users will be able to walk into a room and turn on their Xbox by simply saying "Xbox on".

The technology's natural language detection allows users to say things like "What are my friends playing?" to bring up the Xbox friends list. It's a function that mimics Siri's offerings on the iOS. The Kinect is also said to be able to answer questions asked of it. 

The report states that in addition to improved speech recognition, the new Kinect will be able to detect multiple individuals in the room and suggest a party game if it detects more than one person. 

Finally, with a speech-to-text mode, the Kinect could potentially allow users to dictate the messages they wish to send to other users on the service without having to key them in with the gamepad. 

Assuming the report is true, and we have no reason to believe why it shouldn't be, users of the next Xbox should have plenty to look forward to with the new interface.