Xbox One - Because buttons are for poor people
Technology! And thanks to Microsoft we can now give our consoles voice commands instead of the inconvenient alternative of pressing a single button. Yes, I've finally had a taste of the Xbox One and I am suitably impressed and dumbfounded by its swanky new mechanics.
I can turn it on by simply saying, "Xbox on" and if I'm sat in front of the Kinect camera I don't even have to bother logging in. It remembers my face and does it for me. Positively space age. However, it doesn't take long to realise how much of a twat you've become.
It's too tempting to abuse the voice recognition and needlessly call out commands like an army general on crack. And some of the time the voice 'recognition' doesn't do a lot of recognising. Before you know it, you've said "Xbox turn off" fifteen times. On ten of those occasions you've got out of your seat and crawled over to the mic to speak into it. The power button is an inch away from your hand, but who the fuck wants to press a button when you've paid all this money?
Picture yourself right there. You're on all fours, repeatedly barking at your TV with that weird robotic voice we use when talking to technology, all in the aim of impressing your older relatives who know nothing about this sort of thing. See how much of a twat you've become?
I'm skeptical that voice recognition will ever be perfected. Call me impossible, but I want to be able to mumble, "play disc" out the side of my mouth and have it understand me. Like the way they demonstrate in the Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) trailer. "Xbox record that," he says in a disgracefully laid back American manner. And it understands him! Bollocks.
Let's face it, the sort of people that will opt for the voice control over physically pressing something are the sort that are going to have their mouths full half the time. So the Xbox really needs to understand commands muffled by McDonald's.
In fairness, it does rather well the majority of the time. Particularly in a quiet room, it can pick you up effortlessly. That's not so great when you're playing FIFA however, and your friends start shouting out different formations and substitutions to mess up your team – nonetheless, impressive technology.
Voice recognition is nothing new. Most of us have had it on our phones at some stage, but swiftly decided to neglect it in favour of buttons. What happened then? Touch screens replaced buttons. Now Microsoft apparently doesn’t want us to touch anything! It would all be a bit sad but because the connotations of gaming are so firmly set, it's acceptable to sit there in your underwear and talk to yourself like the loser you are. Serial Siri users on the other hand, are just pond scum.
The Xbox One and Kinect is one small leap for consoles, but one giant leap towards our installed idea of the future. It’s only a matter of time now until we’re all floating around on hover chairs like in Wall-E and become so obese that our triple chins prevent us from speaking clearly. Oh the irony…
Follow me @CynicalCME
