Only five out of 12 countries will support Xbox One voice commands

While the Xbox One is launching in 12 countries in November, the list of countries that will be able to use the Kinect’s voice commands is even shorter. The voice commands can only be used in five out of the 12 countries. This was discovered deep in the Xbox One’s promotional materials stating that “Xbox voice commands will not be available in all markets on the product release date.”

This is because the Xbox One will only support a few languages at launch. US, UK, France, Germany and Canada will be able to use the voice commands. The others—Australia, Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain and New Zealand—will presumably get voice command functionality at a later date.

We believe this is the polar opposite of what one might call a global release

Microsoft’s Director of Marketing Albert Penello stated on NeoGAF that at launch, the console will support English (US), English (UK), Spanish (MX), Spanish (ES), Italian, German and Portuguese. More information about this will be revealed at a later date when the Xbox One’s official website is updated.

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Earlier, Microsoft had revealed the list of games that will be available for the Xbox One on launch. There seems to be a wide variety of games from almost every genre, from hardcore FPSes like Battlefield 4 to fighting games like Killer Instinct to casual Kinect-centric titles such as Just Dance 2014. There are even some family-friendly casual titles thrown in, such as Skylanders: Swap Force and Peggle 2.

Currently, the closest thing to an Xbox One launch date some of the world has is November this year. India, however, will see the console even later—sometime in 2014.