Think waving your arms around while playing Wii games makes you look silly? Would you much prefer it if you could wave your arms around and yell a lot, thereby achieving the all-round persona of a genuine crazy person and illiciting sympathy rather than mockery? You would? I thought so.
Nintendo has just struck a third-party licensing agreement with Fonix Speech Inc. to allow Wii game developers to integrate the company’s voice recognition technology into future titles. The company specializes in speech interface software for all manner of electronic devices, from cell phones to videogame systems, and the deal allows developers use of both its Voiceln Game Edition and Voiceln Karaoke Edition from this point on.
While the latter is clearly bellowing “Mario Singing Party!” at us at a disturbingly high volume, the standard gaming version of the technology typifies a trend for voice-activated gaming that we’ve seen quite a lot of recently, from the DS to Endwar. With Mario Party 6 and 7 making use of mic control and the upcoming High School Musical: Sing It! and Boogie following suit, and rumors of mic-controlled spell casting in the new Harry Potter game, it seems voice input is the newest new lens flare.
Rumors of first-party microphone technology have been going around in various forms since the Wii’s launch, so if this current trend is going to be given a boost by the new deal, it seems Nintendo could save a lot of publishers a lot of money in in-box peripherals over the coming months if they announce something official at E3.
[Thanks to Joe Burling]
