14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s Cortana hasn’t been officially released yet, but Windows Phone 8.1 early adopters are already enjoying the beta version of the personal digital assistant.
The final version of Cortana is expected to arrive along with the mass market release of Windows Phone 8.1 operating system, so we expect it to go live by the end of this month.
Initially, Cortana will be available in the United States, but it will be released in the UK and China soon afterwards. A clear scheduler for the release of Cortana in various countries is not yet available and Microsoft will probably not confirm it until the day it launches it in each of these regions.
For those who wanted to know more about how Cortana was brought to life and what Microsoft’s plans for the personal assistant were, Microsoft’s Marcus Ash, group program manager, made some interesting remarks during his keynote at SSX Advanced.
We have already reported on Microsoft’s plans for Cortana and how the Redmond-based company wants to offer the best experience on Windows Phone devices before even thinking of brining the digital assistant to other platforms.
So now, let’s have a glimpse of the past and see how Microsoft came up with the name for Cortana and how things could have been different if the company had not taken heed of Windows Phone fans’ feedback.
@klxz79 @XCoNOMICRON @joebelfiore We had a list of names. One early front runner was Alyx. Thanks again WP community for weighing in :)
— Marcus Ash (@marcusash) June 17, 2014
It’s pretty obvious and everyone knows by now that the name Cortana comes from the AI character in the Halo video series. The AI is voiced by Jen Taylor, who also borrowed her voice to the digital assistant.
What people don’t know is that Microsoft came up with a list of names for its intelligent personal assistant and let this list leak to get a feeling of what people would like to name Cortana.
Before the names were leaked, one of the front runners was Alyx, but Microsoft had listened to fans’ feedback and decided to go with Cortana. Well, at least part of the decision was based on Windows Phone enthusiasts’ opinions.
For those unfamiliar, Alyx Vance is a non-player character that appears in Valve’s Half Life 2 game. She’s a major ally to the main protagonist, Gordon Freeman, and an important figure in the human resistance against the rule of an alien race.
The information has recently been confirmed by Microsoft’s Marcus Ash, who has also implied that, partly, we have to thank the Windows Phone community for the Cortana name. Nicely done, Microsoft!