Wii rumor du jour: voice recognition

Take this one with the usual grain of salt, but the latest Wii rumor making the rounds is that the some Wii games will feature "advanced" voice recognition, adding a whole new way to make a fool of yourself while swinging a remote control around the room. The news comes from a so-called "trusted person" on IGN's Insider forums, who's apparently been spot on about Wii deets in the past. According to the source, the system converts speech to text that can be sent to other players, even detecting the tone, pitch, and volume of your voice and adjusting the font size and color accordingly. As you'd expect, much of the initial support will apparently come from first-party Nintendo titles, in particular those aimed at a younger audience. The source also says that the system will employ wireless head-mounted microphones, and drops one other interesting tidbit, saying that some Wii and DS peripherals will be compatible with each other. More on this as we get it, but somehow after everything Wii thus far we'd like to think this one might be workable.

[Jonathan Keim @ Aug 15th 2006 4:12PM]

That's the coolest thing I've ever heard for online gaming. Especially that it will make the font big and red if you yell.

[Nate @ Aug 15th 2006 4:12PM]

"I TOLD THEM I WANTED A PS3!!!"

[georgedakota @ Aug 15th 2006 4:14PM]

another way to make you 10 year old wii fans into geeks for life. as for you 20 year old wii fans, well you aint getting laid anytime soon playing that toy!

[.ed @ Aug 15th 2006 4:18PM]

the benefits of text over voice as described by the patent:

[0009] While voice chat has been widely adopted in the gaming community and has achieved a fair degree of success, text chat is still being used by some because of several advantages it provides over voice chat. Communicating with other online players in massive multiplayer online role playing games, for example, is still often provided by text chat rather than voice chat. Text chat provides a record of conversations so that players can review exactly what was said by other players, and also provides the ability to easily identify the player who sent a particular message (text can be tagged with a speaker's identity). In addition, using text chat, one player's statements can be easily separated from another player's statements since the text typically appears separately (this can also be done with voice chat using a half-duplex type communications system, but this might be somewhat frustrating to the speakers). Additionally, unlike most voice chat, text chat provides the ability to mask the player's true identity. This can be useful when the game play includes avatars that in effect provide an "alter ego" for each human player. For example, if a 12 year old boy is playing the role of a 40 year old warrior, voice chat can spoil or detract from the game play experience since the warrior ends up having the voice of a 12 year old. Additional advantages of text chat include the ability to monitor and censor player conversations for bad language, and reduction in the amount of bandwidth required to convey the information.

[0010] Despite the continued usefulness of text chat in some game play contexts, using the keyboard continues to have significant disadvantages, especially for console or other game platforms that do not include keyboards. A keyboard is a bulky accessory, and it detracts from game play if the user has to remove his hands from the controller to type a message. The impersonation problem with voice chat can be addressed by providing voice filters that alter the sound of a player's voice, but so far players have not generally been using such voice masking since the resulting sound quality can be relatively low and intelligibility ends up being sacrificed.

I like the idea fully, and hopefully this will be in the DS's future, too.

...and maybe in blog comments? (color pink for sarcasm)

.ed

[Jared @ Aug 15th 2006 4:18PM]

Then, after the Wii launch, the big N can help MS on Vista's craptacular voice-recog.

[Ben Hobbs @ Aug 15th 2006 4:21PM]

Yeah just like that stupid robot toy was supposed to be a real robot and be able to do stuff, or by wearing a plastic glove with a nintendo controller embedded into it - manificently turning your gaming experience into true virtual reality.

I'm gonna go on the record and say that I think the Wii is going to be rubbish, Am I the only person that thinks the whole waving the wand thing sounds really crap? Really how tired is that going to become after the first hour or so?

[Jobu70 @ Aug 15th 2006 4:40PM]

Hey georgedakota,
So getting a PS3 or 360 will get you laid? Please tell us how. And btw Nintendo is FAR more breakthrough when it comes to gaming than Microsoft or Sony. For chrissakes Sony can't even engineer a rumble pack in the controller!

[sveden @ Aug 15th 2006 4:45PM]

"Am I the only person that thinks the whole waving the wand thing sounds really crap?"

Yes. Evidence = Nintendo DS. Its a fun system AND innovative. Go figure.

[Alex @ Aug 15th 2006 4:48PM]

interesting idea, I'd assume that most of the implementations are going to be either young children's games, or "brain age" style games (which the voice recognition works pretty well, except it has a hard tiem when I say blue)...

either way, its good to know,

Ben- I believe the "waving" concept with the controllers is only being used on some games (it appears most at launch), I think there are still going to be some that use a more traditional controller approach...

Still, out of the three the Wii is my favourite, cheap , innovative, great games, sounds like a winner..

[Justin @ Aug 15th 2006 4:58PM]

I don't know about this. I highly doubt the Wii has enough processing power to handle something so advanced!

[mnugghuhx @ Aug 15th 2006 4:58PM]

Another benefit of the wii. Gets nerds into shape. Hit the gym if you can make small movements for an hour.

[Chris @ Aug 15th 2006 5:16PM]

AAHHAHAHAHAHAHA I love that picture.

[Richard Garfinkel @ Aug 15th 2006 5:16PM]

Because Nintendo hasn't done voice recognition before...

[David @ Aug 15th 2006 5:28PM]

Alex: "the voice recognition works pretty well, except it has a hard tiem when I say blue"

I found the same thing. Try saying "brew", engrish style. Works wonders.

[Nathaniel @ Aug 15th 2006 5:35PM]

Wow! If this is true, it will be another amazing reason to buy the Wii. This would take online play to a whole new level.

[Aaron @ Aug 15th 2006 5:35PM]

The original XBox had several games that supported voice commands.

It's not a perfect tech and in the end is usualy a pain in the ass.

[electro^plankton @ Aug 15th 2006 5:36PM]

"I don't know about this. I highly doubt the Wii has enough processing power to handle something so advanced!"

It has more than enough power. I saw an art installation last year in Los Angeles utilizing the same tech powered by an iBook G3.

A small cafe filled with tables, microphones, and projection screens above each table. When you started chatting, your voice was translated into text on the projection screen above you inside an animated chat bubble. It could even detect tonal and expressive qualities in your voice, so if you were shouting, the font would dynamically get bigger - all caps, and vice versa if you're whispering. It was pretty cool because as you walked around the cafe, everyone had these little chat bubbles floating above their heads. It was a surreal experience because I could look across the room and read what other people's conversations were and get a sense of how excited they were by watching how their text size, color and shape changed.

[raymond @ Aug 15th 2006 6:22PM]

but the wii has bluetooth(for the remotes) so why not just use a bluetooth headset that yo could use on a cell phone since you can program the frequency they run on. it would work, right?

[david @ Aug 15th 2006 6:46PM]

god, nice photoshop.

[Cade @ Aug 15th 2006 8:14PM]

The way I figure it is that Wii is going to either be a huge hit or a huge bust.

[Kyle Darling @ Aug 15th 2006 11:30PM]

Christmas morning...

Boy:
"OH MY GOOODDD"
"NINTENDO Wiiiiiiii!!!!"
Box:
"NINTENDO Wiii, THATS ME!!!"

[Chris @ Aug 16th 2006 1:12AM]

Hahahahahaha. Kyle, Good call.

[Aksel @ Aug 16th 2006 3:49AM]

if anyone's playing cs with me on thw wii they'd see the screen covered in "DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! Ooops! I died :$

[Joe @ Aug 16th 2006 10:16AM]

"blue, BLUE, BREW, BRRREEEEEEWWWW" Anyone else done this on Brain Age for the DS? Nintendo's voice recognition bites...

[Scorpious @ Aug 16th 2006 11:18AM]

RE: Aksel

At least that'd be better than constantly seeing "BOOM!!!! HEADSHOT!!!!" :p

RE: Ben

The Wii is the only system I'm considering buying out of the "next gen" systems, because it's the only one I'm willing to pay $250 for. I wouldn't pay $250 for the PS3, let alone the $500+ they want for it. I have a feeling that sentiment alone is going to boost Nintendo's sales through the roof.

Voice recognition on the PS2 sucks, by the way. I've played some of those karaoke games on PS2, as well as NFL Head Coach which allows you to "call" the plays via voice rec.... and none of them can understand me at all. I have to say the same thing ten times just to get a response, and it's usually wrong. I hope Nintendo gets theirs right if they do it.

[BLAH @ Sep 24th 2006 9:37AM]

ORLY??