Microsoft revealed this week that it will remove Cortana from Xbox One and will evolve how voice commands work on the console.

“We are moving away from on-console experiences to cloud-based assistant experiences,” Microsoft’s Bradley Rossetti revealed. “This means you can no longer talk to Cortana via your headset. However, you can use the Xbox Skill for Cortana via the Cortana app on iOS, Android, and Windows or via Harmon Kardon Invoke speaker to power your Xbox One, adjust volume, launch games and apps, capture screenshots, and more —just as you can do with Alexa-enabled devices today.”

Microsoft began scaling back its support for Cortana in its core consumer platforms last year, and it specifically started adding support for third-party personal digital assistants like Amazon Alexa to both Windows and Xbox. With this change, Cortana will be no more integrated with Xbox than Alexa is, and I assume that, given recent changes in Windows 10, that will happen on the PC desktop as well.

Microsoft says that it will continue improving and evolving the Xbox Skill “across supported digital assistants—that is, Alexa and Cortana today, and probably Google Assistant, Siri, and even Bixby in the future. And it is working on a solution that will bring dictation back to the virtual keyboard on Xbox One.

Tagged with Cortana