The Xbox One, Xbox One X, and the Xbox One S may soon start to support digital assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Microsoft has already incorporated Cortana support in its latest range of gaming consoles for some time now although it is not available in all regions.
As per reports, the company has plans to introduce support for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant as well as its own Cortana, however, users will be given a choice to choose their preferred Assistant. They will get the option to install the Xbox Skills app as per their choice to get connected and control the console with voice commands.
As per a report by WindowsCentral quoting a reliable source that is close to both Microsoft and Amazon Alexa, the Kinect, and Devices option in the Xbox One OS builds have a section called Digital Assistants that will enable the users to control the console using voice commands. As of now, the full set of features is not known, but it is speculated that voice commands may become a part of the gaming console soon.
The date of introduction of these new features has not been revealed yet but according to WindowsCental, Microsoft may make an announcement in this regard soon. Also the fact that Albert Penello, ex-Marketing lead at Microsoft for Xbox One has joined Amazon to build support for Amazon Echo on gaming consoles, the aforementioned report may turn out to be true.
This move by Microsoft could possibly be to improve the sale of the Xbox One X and the Xbox One S. It is because, apart from the backward compatibility, the reasons to buy an Xbox One console are not many since a number of games are slated to release on the PS4 this year and it would be more beneficial to get a PlayStation 4 instead.
Anyways, we have to wait for now to see what exactly Microsoft does and how everything pans out for the company.