Microsoft’s Kinect voice sensor, touted to be the perfect gaming companion, is reportedly working a bit too well, even with the latest marketing campaign featuring Breaking Bad actor Aaron Paul, generating unintended results for some viewers.
The new commercial for Xbox One, starring the Need for Speed actor, saying the words, “Xbox on” to switch on his Xbox One, but turns out that he has also accidentally triggered a number of consumers’ consoles without their permission through the advert.
Thousands of gamers – bemused and annoyed – have been posting on Twitter and video game forums that the advert activated the Kinect voice sensor, turning on their consoles.
In the 30-second clip, the 34-aged actor says “After the role of a lifetime, I’ve been – busy. Xbox On.” He gives away a series of commands, including “snap TV” to “record that” in the entire advert.
Another commercial show Paul using Kinect voice commands to play the sci-fi shooter Titanfall is said to have similar effects.
A user tweeted that “Aaron Paul just launched Titanfall on my #XboxOne not cool bro.”
Xbox one users can easily fix the problem by disabling the Kinect’s voice sensor or completely turning it off.
A Microsoft spokesman refused to comment on any questions related to the specific ad, but said that there had been previous campaigns featuring voice commands.
However, this isn’t the first commercial for Xbox to accidentally activate Kinect voice commands as a video from last November reveals Xbox responding to a command from an internet commercial with the command “Xbox go to Dead Rising 3.”
Frankly, the ones that these hilarious incidents are happening to are also the ones missing out on one of the best features of the XB1: TV integration.
This problem wouldn’t occur if they used the TV passthrough of the XB1. Also, then they would be able to use stuff like snap TV as shown in the commercial.