Unlock Cortana On Xbox One Ahead Of 2016 Release
Cortana is all the buzz in Microsoft’s Windows 10, so Xbox One players are clamoring for Cortana to be available on Microsoft’s new-gen console, as well. And while Microsoft recently confirmed that Cortana won’t be coming to Xbox One until 2016, we have found that Cortana is already hibernating somewhere in the new Xbox One Experience preview, ready to be woken up.
The Inquisitrpreviously reported that Xbox officially announced that Cortana will be officially launched for Xbox One in 2016. Via the Major Nelson blog, Xbox Director of Programming Larry Hyrb writes as follows.
“For those who have asked about Cortana, our plan is to add Cortana to the Xbox One experience preview later this year. From there, we’ll ensure that the experience is tuned for gamers before we officially launch Cortana in 2016.”
This has been very depressing news for Xbox One fans the world over who were anticipating Microsoft’s digital assistant in their Xbox One consoles as the New Xbox One Experience rolls in next month. But gamers with Xbox One consoles enrolled in the New Xbox One Experience Preview report that they have unlocked Cortana in their Xbox One. How is this possible? This is not an official roll out as of date, but Xbox One owners are reporting that Cortana is unlockable by smashing the A button.
If you’re enrolled in the New Xbox One Experience Preview, you can follow the steps below made available by VentureBeat to unlock and test out Cortana in your Xbox One:
- Hit the Xbox button twice to bring up the guide.
- Navigate down to settings (which is the gear symbol).
- Press left to enter the settings options.
- Press up until none of the words in the menu are highlighted. You should only need to press up once.
- Now, hit the A button on your controller a couple of times.
- The Xbox One should automatically take you to the Cortana app to set it up.
Following the steps above will activate Cortana on a separate window on the left side of the screen, on top of the app, or the game running on your Xbox One. Since the New Xbox One Experience is already running Windows 10, interacting with Cortana on the Xbox One will pretty much work like interacting with her in Windows 10. Saying “Hey Cortana” allows the user to enable voice commands, and this is already achievable via this trick on the Xbox One.
Tech Gadget Central reports that as of now, this Cortana feature on Xbox One is still on a very soft launch, and several voice commands are still not responsive, apart from several Cortana features already available on Windows 10, like asking her to set up your to-do list. This just gives you an early glimpse of how Cortana will work on the Xbox One, once she comes in 2016, and it’s a cool technique as of now to try out if you’re on the New Xbox One Experience Preview. Xbox users over at Reddit have posted a photo of Cortana unlocked on Xbox One and listed the voice commands that they found already working with the hidden Cortana on Xbox One.
- “Hey, Cortana”
- “Go, Home”
- “Watch TV”
- “Volume down/up”
- “Volume down/up (numerical amount)”
- (Weather based questions)
- (Expressions ex. What’s 1 + 1)
- “Tell me a joke”
- “Hey, Cortana open that”
Twitter user and the Verge writer Tom Warren posted a video on Twitter showing that he was also able to bring out Cortana on Xbox One, and adds that Cortana interacts with the Xbox One user via Kinect, and not headset.
Cortana on Xbox One pic.twitter.com/ZtHinjHxEF
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) October 9, 2015
Since Cortana’s availability on the Xbox One is already spreading around like wildfire, it’s only a matter of hours or days before Xbox comes up with something to bring a stop to this glitch/secret. So if you’re interested, better fire up that Xbox One console and try it out before Cortana transfers to a new hiding place.
The New Xbox One Experience will release Fall, 2015, and Cortana will officially come to the new Xbox One system in 2016.
[Image via Microsoft]
