If they were to include voice recognition in SH5 that would be great for immersion, especially enhancing the 'commanding' experience.
However, as it is, voice recognition support in Vista is a bit of a problem if you do not have the English language pack (or of a few other major languages) OR Vista Ultimate. Otherwise Speech is useless. Which I assume applies to alot if not most people. Microsoft claims that it's speech recognition pack is part of almost every Vista edition, even Home Basic (just not the Starter edition iirc). But for some stupid reason Microsoft forced Speech to only look for a speech-engine that matches the installed user interface language. So, for example if you installed the dutch language pack at Vista installation(like I did), it complains that you cannot use it. Even if the (game) software requires you to talk in english, the Speech software stubornly tries to find the the engine for your own language. If you want to change between language packs you need to have Vista Ultimate (or Enterprise but thats only sold to large enterprises, not to single users). Which alot of user simply do not have. The only solution out of this is to upgrade to Ultimate, as there is no way back when you made the language choice in the other editions. But since alot of users only have an OEM license of Vista it does not apply to them. They would need to buy a completely new Vista license.
The problem would be easily solved if Microsoft provided an update to Speech that is less restricting to non-english speakers. But I won't hold my breath on that.
Read:
http://blogs.msdn.com/speech/archive...ows-vista.aspx