Kinect needed to use Cortana on Xbox One

Cortana will soon be making her way to Xbox One, outside of the Halo franchise that is, but you’ll need Kinect if you want to utilise her.

A new promotional video from Microsoft shows off the new Xbox One experience. The most intriguing element is Cortana’s usefulness when you’re playing a game. The player asks if a friend is online, and is even able to ask Cortana what the next story mission in the game they’re playing is.

The video also mentions that Kinect is “required for Cortana speech recognition." Initially, it seemed that Kinect would simply be the best way to use Cortana. But that’s not the case.