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The complexities behind localising Kinect for numerous languages are causing Xbox one launch delays across eight European territories, Microsoft has claimed.
It was recently announced that The Xbox One’s launch has been delayed in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland.
Speaking to OXM, the firm’s head of product development Albert Penello said the delayed release was not down to a shortage in supply of the console, as many had believed.
He said that the more integrated nature of the motion sensing and voice recognition Kinect tech compared to the Xbox 360 meant there were added complexities to localising the peripheral and hardware.
Penello added that it was frustrating to see people on the internet assuming it was a volume issue, which he insisted was not the case.
"People assume there’s a volume issue which in fact there isn’t,” he said.
“You’re actually seeing pre-orders pop back up now because we’re able allocate the countries’ volumes back in. It’s there, the problem is localisation. And once people see the system and how integral it is, it’s not just text integration.
"But at the same time we said, this is a region-free console. In regions like Switzerland where people speak German and French, they can get a German or French console. It’ll work fine. They can log in to their marketplace, use their language, we don’t geo-fence Live or any of the content any more. We don’t have official language support – but the console still works."
