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According to a Eurogamer Spain interview (translation) with Microsoft PR & Event Manager Lidia Pitzalis, Kinect will not support voice control in all regions when it launches this November. At launch, according to Pitzalis, voice control will be available in the US, UK, Mexico and Japan.

Eurogamer Spain notes that speaking English (or Spanish with a Mexican accent) won't suffice either, as voice control will actually be disabled in the affected countries at launch. Spain and other launch countries, including France, Germany, Italy and even Canada, will have to wait for a Spring 2011 update to enable the voice control features. For those without an internet connection, the update will be provided on future games and via "other solutions that do not involve an additional cost."

#xbox360 Oh dear. It's not just Spaniards who won't be able to control Kinect with their voices when the peripheral launches. It's everyone who doesn't live in the US, Mexico or United Kingdom. More »

Feature being patched in next Spring.

Plus, new services and more inside.

#xbox360 According to the Spanish press, Microsoft's motion-sensing camera Kinect will not speak Spanish. It will only speak "Mexican". More »

#ruhroh Microsoft had to figure this was going to happen: Someone put their Kinect beta hardware and their console for sale on eBay, hoping to get $1,200 for it. It was rather quickly de-listed, however. More »

We'll be honest, we somehow let the Kinect title Adrenalin Misfits -- known as Crossboard7 outside of North America -- slip by during both E3 and Gamescom. We're not sure how it happened, because the trailers are priceless. They instantly evoke the memories of Wii launch titles, starring incredibly enthusiastic children and families just having a grand old time.

The "crossboarding" game offers several modes of play, including both single-player and multiplayer races and minigames. It also features unlockable boards and the ability to play as either an in-game character or your Xbox 360 Avatar. Also, if you can believe it, YOU are the controller.

#clips Let the Kinect product placement commence! Or let it continue, as in addition to making a none-too-subtle cameo on HBO's Entourage this week, the Xbox 360 motion controller has been featured prominently during Justin Bieber's current world tour. More »

#leak Beta users for the Xbox 360's Kinect seem to have mixed feelings about the still-in-development motion gaming device. More »

#pax2010 Are you going to this year's PAX convention in lovely Seattle, Washington this weekend? Kotaku is. Ubisoft is too, giving many attendees their first look at games like Rez spiritual sequel Child of Eden, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and something new. More »

#china Microsoft is releasing a controller-free system called Kinect. So is Beijing eedoo Technology Ltd., a spin-off company created by Chinese computer giant Lenovo. It's called the eBox. Watch out, Microsoft! More »

#xbox360 With the official Kinect Beta flooding out to those select few whom Microsoft invited to test out their upcoming motion gaming add-on, the images are already starting to stream in. More »

It seems like Microsoft's Kinect has been dogged by rumors of its limitations since day one. Some rumors have been busted -- you can play Kinect while seated, for instance -- but others are still nebulous just two months out from launch. Speaking to Kinect boss Kudo Tsunoda, VideoGamer attempted to clarify whether or not Kinect is limited to two "active" players, as was reported earlier this year.

Tsunoda's answer: Look at Dance Central. Said Tsunoda, "Dance Central is already incorporating a lot more than two players," adding that "it's not necessarily any kind of limitation as much as it is developers just trying to customize the experiences around what they think is the best way to play." Furthermore, Tsunoda noted that it can be difficult to work too many players into a game's design, but reiterated that Dance Central is "already incorporating more than two."

Not satisfied, we contacted Harmonix for further clarification on this issue. Read the response after the break.

#rumor If you're one of the lucky ones receiving an invitation to Kinect's beta testing program tonight, a word of caution before you accept: you'll be losing most of your means of communicating over Xbox Live. More »

#top Looks like our plentiful tipsters were right earlier this month when they told us that Microsoft was offering a "limited audience" of Xbox 360 owners an opportunity to beta test Kinect. More »

Burger King and Microsoft are back in the sack, following up their 2006 tryst with some new, Kinect-enabled treats. First off are the Kids Meal-powered Kinectimal plushies, as demonstrated in the video after the break. Buy some arterial plaque-packed food, get a virtual toy for your virtual pet. Guys, this is it. The future. It's happening and this is what we have to show for it.

But they also announced a Burger King Kinect promotion back in June, teasing that "full details of the promotion are still top secret." When we noticed an Xbox 360 title on game-trading site Goozex titled "Burger King Kinect: The First-of-its-Kind Entertainment Experience So You Can Have It Your Way" we wanted to find out some more. So we contacted Goozex, who told us the data is provided by Rovi (formely Muze), has a tentative release date of 11/30/10 and no MSRP, "but that's not unusual for pre-release data," we're told.

Perhaps more notable is the following note appended to the end of the description: "This promotion has not been officially announced to be an actual videogame. Please check back later for official info, maybe eat a chicken sandwich or something while you wait to find out ..."

And just for fun, we thought we'd share that (hyperbolic) description of the game:
Following up on the groundbreaking promotional lollapastravaganzas Microsoft and Burger King launched in 2006 with the legendary collectible burger-based game triology (which included Big Bumpin', Pocketbike Racer, and Sneak King) this next endeavor of human triumph now uses the revolutionary powers of the Kinect motion sensor to give YOU, the player, the power to experience virtual burger consumption satisfaction like no planet of the solar system has in all of history!!

You know how sometimes people go "away" for the summer, and then when they come back they look ... totally different? Well, Major Nelson's Xbox Live Avatar didn't go anywhere but has seemingly undergone one such full body makeover -- as evidenced by the above comparison between the bobble-headed likeness (via Xbox Avatar Life) we had come to associate with the Xbox Live director of programming and his current Avatar. It would appear that Major's Avatar and perhaps other "VIP" Avatars are the (beta) test subjects in a forthcoming effort to transform the currently cartoonish Avatars into -- to put it candidly -- virtual figures that would look a lot less goofy in a motion-controlled sports game.

Recently, Rare senior programmer Nick Burton told OXM UK that Xbox Live Avatars would be proportionally redesigned to better connect the physical movements of Kinect players to their on-screen Avatars. Presumably, this "Avatar 2.0" update would occur in time for Kinect's November 4 launch and possibly as part of the expected, annual fall update of the Xbox 360 UI. The new trimmer Avatars are visible in Rare's Kinect Sports screenshots below.

Microsoft has said that it plans to improve the technical quality of audio communication across Xbox Live through a system update, set to arrive this fall. The update, which Eurogamer reports will coincide with the November launch of Kinect, will upgrade the audio codec that handles all of your online chatting, strategizing and your mothering.

Speaking at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Xbox Live Europe general manager Jerry Johnson explained that the basic codec had originally required just a 64k connection. "It's time for us to move on," he said. "Especially if we want to think about broadening - a crackly headset on the top of your head - not what people think of when they talk about popular entertainment."

Johnson's next statement, which suggested that general quality of Xbox Live communication would be improved by sending every subscriber a copy of "Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners)," was inaudible.

Kudo speaks about why Microsoft's motion controller matters.

"Peripherals for Kinect? How does that work?" you might be asking yourself. First, we would point out that every article of clothing you own is technically a Kinect peripheral. Second, the first Kinect peripherals from PDP aren't the kind you might expect. Rather than offering up plastic tennis rackets or lightsabers, PDP has announced a line of products (first glimpsed at E3) to help consumers mount their new Kinect in various situations.

• Wall Mount - $14.99
• TV Mount - $39.99
• Extension Cable - $49.99(!)
• Floor Stand - $29.99

We suppose some people might spend $40 on the VESA standard TV mount, though you could accomplish the same task with $5 worth of Velcro. The floor stand might prove useful, however, as it keeps the unit "above the floor to help protect the Kinect for Xbox 360 from foot traffic and dirt." We might suggest the off-brand version of the floor stand, though. It's called a table. PDP's Kinect products will be available this November.

#xbox360 The idea of controlling your console with gestures in a neat concept, but it also comes with a slew of technical challenges. More »

Microsoft nixes rumours of no voice support for Kinect launch.

#gamescom2010 We know what you're thinking. Will Microsoft's Kinect read your body when fully encased in a fur suit? Direct from Germany, Kotaku has your answer. More »

First, the good news: Fighters Uncaged Prodcuer Luc Verdier recognizes that there have been too many casual, family-oriented games announced for the Kinect thus far, and says the game is his attempt to fix this. Now the bad news: based on a recent demo of the game at Gamescom, Fighters Uncaged utterly fails in this attempt.

As you can see in this live demonstration video, the movement recognition for Fighters Uncaged is far from perfect at this point. Punches can be completely finished and retracted in the real world before they even start in the game, making it hard to string together quick combinations of moves. In fact, Verdier said combos in the final game would actually be activated using a quick-time event system, asking players to string together preset poses for an unblockable chain of attacks. A similar match-the-on-screen-pose system is already in place to dodge or block incoming attacks, and feels incredibly unwieldy.

Since shortly after the Wii Remote first brought motion control to the masses, we've known that over-enthusiastic use (and slippery hands) can lead to controllers (and other things) getting broken. So what happens when Kinect's 3D camera turns your entire body into the controller? Well, not surprisingly, it turns out you're the one that could get broken.

"Versus mode was a bit too dangerous," Fighters Uncaged producer Luc Verdier said when asked about a competitive mode for his newly announced Kinect-enabled fighting game. "It's possible to do, but people just end up hitting each other." Thus, the game's only multiplayer mode is a cooperative battle, where two players work together against the artificial intelligence.

Of course, people don't usually end up killing one another while playing games like Just Dance, even if four players are moving about in an enclosed space. But Verdier said motion-controlled games where multiple players are synchronized are safer than games where the players can just "do whatever." We'd also hazard to guess that dancing players just tend to be less intentionally violent than fighting game players, especially when those fighting game players are actively playing.

DanceMasters, Konami's Kinect dancing game, has a more Konami-like name for its European release: Dance Evolution. And very DDR-like music, if the trailer is any indication. We hope, for everyone's sake, that this works out better than the last time Konami tried to compete with a Harmonix game.

We've been told before that the Xbox 360's Kinect would work when "an experience is developed with sitting in mind," but we hadn't had the opportunity to really test that. In a Gamescom meeting, where we saw the Kinect version of the Xbox dashboard, we tried out the menu system and movie controls to test its recognition of seated users:

• Sitting in a chair: Definitely works.
• Sitting on the floor: Works.
• Reclining while facing the Kinect: Works.
• Reclining with the Kinect at our side: We couldn't get this to work, but we've been told that it will by launch.
• Using another human as a coffee table (should have taken photos!): Kinect recognized the person behind the human coffee table trying to control the movie.

According to Microsoft, Kinect was running on an improved version of the software used during E3 in June. The manufacturer is set to make further improvements before the camera's November debut.

#gamescom2010 You love to punch your arms through the air, like you're beating up ghosts. You wish you could be part of a Fight Club. You have an Xbox 360 and may have a Kinect. There is a game for you. More »

#clips What starts out with what appears to be a guy recreating a scene from Bruno, ends with some fantastic two-man avant-garde dance moves. More »

Look, we're just gonna cut to the quick on this one: Fighters Uncaged is a new fighting game for Xbox 360 Kinect and it doesn't look promising. We'll lay it out for you in bullet point format:

• It's a Kinect title due in November and we're just hearing about it now
• It's a fighting game using Kinect - see attached gallery for real-life images of people punching the air with all their might
• It has some truly terrible character design (Exhibit A and Exhibit B)
• There's a typo on the above screen: 'Exausted'
• In order to execute "super strikes" you "need to shout while unleashing your strike," says Project Manager Luc Verdier
• On Joystiq's patented "Start-to-Bandanna'd-Gangster" scale, it earns an impressive score of "0 seconds"

In fact, the only good thing we can see is that it's by a newly created developer named AMA Studios. Yeah, an unproven developer would normally be a bad sign, but get this: They're located in Belgium. You know what else is located in Belgium? Jean-Claude Van Damme. It's a country full of french fries and ass-kicking. Find the trailer after the break.