Bing Voice Search now on Xbox 360

Microsoft announced December 4th that Xbox users with the Kinect voice control option will soon be able access the Bing search engine from within the Game Console. The free upgrade which will roll out to 57 million people in the near future will allow users to utilize Bing search to look for games, TV shows, movies and music with a focus on entertainment.

Microsoft has a number of Television, Internet and Cable Content providers lined up to provide Xbox optimized content to users as well. This reminds us a lot of GoogleTV, which even after a recent update hasn't lived up to its hype. Regardless, with an installed base as large as the one Xbox has, the new voice search feature is certain to bump up Bing's search volume a noticeable amount. Unfortunately, this is not something that will make a difference to most Web site owners in the near future as this new update appears to only allow Bing to search Xbox Optimized sites or content.

In order to use Bing on the Xbox 360, you must be signed in to your Xbox Live account. Once you're signed in, you'll see a new Bing option on the home menu. However, unless you're wanting to use Bing to search for Movies, Games or other entertainment you'll be wasting your time as it won't show you standard Bing Organic search results. Even a simple query such as Weather was a failure with nothing but movies returned. In other words, this is not for using Bing regular search.

That said, one positive thing we can mention is that Xbox 360 voice search does actually work pretty good for a new feature. Searching for a movie title was generally accurate, as were names of games for example Transformers. In order to conduct a search using voice, you just say Xbox, Bing KEYWORD which is much easier than entering the text via the handheld controller. As an addition to the Xbox, the new Voice Search is ok, but it fails miserably at general Web sea...