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Forget type, voice is new buzz word as Microsoft looks to introduce searches by oral and gesture movements to Bing and Xbox Kinect by ‘early next year’ according to reports.
Bing, Microsoft’s search engine introduced two years ago, is fighting tough against the might of Google, which owns about two thirds of the search market and is looking to up the ante with its engine technology to understand everyday speak of searchers rather than going by single keywords.
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| Say a command: XBox Kinect to run on voice from next year. |
This massive gamble on Bing comes as the Seattle giant has lost $5 billion to date on the search engine and holds just 14.7% marketshare, which it claims it gained from Google but declared last week it will “reorganise the web” and “change the game fundamentally.”
This latest move to voice is Microsoft’s answer to Google Voice, announced in June, which allows users ‘just speak your query and the answer is on the way.’
Read Search War: Microsoft Losing Billions On Bing As Plans Secret Weapon Here
Although we knew voice recognition was in the pipeline for the console, the notion that it is coming sooner rather than later is an exciting prospect, and will now mean the Xbox is no longer strictly a gaming device.
“We want to focus more on experiences,” David McLean, Microsoft Australia said in an interview this week.
“Our job is to make sure, no matter what you are doing, it is with Xbox.”
A staggering 40% of the time gamers spend on Xbox relates to non-gaming activities, which the software giant is now looking to capitalise on to keep users on their network rather than revert to the web via Google.
“Consumers are diverse in what they like and what the Xbox is will be different for different people.There are some people who will only ever use it to play games,” McLean added.
Streaming of Netflix via XBox has also exploded in popularity with high usage proportion via the console in the US, meaning content aside from just games is not king.
Bing has already joined forces with Facebook for search and the voice dimension could introduce an entire new way to social network, he added.
“I think the technology community has for too long siloed people.”
