A mic in your wireless controller for voice commands and search...captain obvious

[Rangers]

Voice commands are becoming mainstream. Kinect kinda missed the boat, but now we have Alexa, Siri, Cortana, OK Google...

Lets say on Xbox you can use Kinect which is dying or the headset, too much trouble if you aren't already using it. Just put a little full time dedicated mic in your controller for voice search/control of your console. Makes SO much sense. I believe certain streaming boxes (Amazon?) already have this in their remotes. Typing on a console is stupid cumbersome. Voice control and search isn't a panacea, but it's very helpful. I already set all my alarms via either my phone or my Echo Dot just by saying it, for example.

Why haven't the companies done this yesterday? Surely it's coming uh, "next gen, if there is such a thing? Maybe on Scorpio?

I'm sure we'll get the usual privacy complaints, especially if MS is involved, but this voice stuff is already so well established in other areas it shouldn't be an issue.

I guess not too much point to this thread except I cant believe this hasn't happened yet, no reason it couldn't be added to a current console. Hell MS already did all the work with Kinect, and Bing already powers Alexa (Amazons voice search) and, I want it. Typing via controller is so cumbersome.

 

[Arwin]

You should see my son with Siri on his iPad. I told him that if he keeps watching so many youtube movies about Minecraft etc. in English, he might as well use DuoLingo to learn English, so he's doing that now. As he's not a great typist yet he just went for the dictation features, both for the English and the Dutch bits that he needs to type in there. It works amazingly well.

This is the main problem I can see with Cortana, as currently it doesn't support nearly all languages. Here Apple really has the leg up on everybody - even Google doesn't seem to come close.

Certainly adding voice control to UWP applications seems fairly trivial. There are some really nice examples in the UWP sdk (on GitHub! I love the new Microsoft). I'm jealous we don't have this on PS4, though we do have voice commands there and they at least work with any audio-input.

The question is what hardware would be supported on the Xbox One, but I wouldn't be surprised if it works with current headsets already. Didn't they recently change the Xbox One OS to support voice commands from the headset?

Including it in the controller, I don't know. The thing already does everything and the kitchen sink. The PSVR headset includes one though, and there I would expect it to be very useful too.

 

[Jay]

If they did add a mic to the controller, then a dedicated Cortana button would also be nice.
So you could either say "hey Cortana" or push the button to activate it.
That would make using it a lot more faster and streamlined for many people. imo
Edit -

The question is what hardware would be supported on the Xbox One, but I wouldn't be surprised if it works with current headsets already. Didn't they recently change the Xbox One OS to support voice commands from the headset?

Yes, they made it so you can use Cortana via headset.
Which is ok if your not playing a single player game, or just want to use voice for navigation or apps etc.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We all know it should be a speaker at the bottom of one handle and a mic at the bottom of the other and the whole thing is to be held like an old phone. We've all done that, I'm sure!

 

[orangpelupa]

kinect is convenient but doesnt fly. to make a mic in a controller popularly used, MS/Sony/Nintendo need to make it even more integrated than Kinect, easier to use than kinect, support wider language than kinect.

my dream is playing games like fallout by just using voice command while im working on something else or while im eating or while blah blah blah.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

So you want to talk to your console whilst it plays games for you? Give me a room to sleep in and I'll take that job.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm guessing the issue with the mic in controller idea is quality and noise cancellation. I don't know how good the mics in smartphones are, and how well they perform in front of a tv with a game playing in the background. Haven't really tried.

I can't remember if Microsoft allows voice commands over the chat headset now.

 

[BRiT]

I can't remember if Microsoft allows voice commands over the chat headset now.

They do, at least for "Hey Cortana" commands. I don't know if they do so with the "Xbox" commands.

 

[Rangers]

Just to prove that this already exists

 

[bgroovy]

PS4 has supported voice commands from headsets plugged into the controller since day one. It also has a built-in speaker. Very small leap to add a mic there too. You could probably roll your own with a tiny stick mic plugged into the 3.5mm port on a DS4.

Sent from my A1P using Tapatalk

 

[AzBat]

I'd rather have the mic in the media remote, but if you want it in the controller you might try this...



https://www.amazon.com/dp/9625993428

Tommy McClain

 

[orangpelupa]

So you want to talk to your console whilst it plays games for you? Give me a room to sleep in and I'll take that job.

No no, I mean, I give it a command, then it executed said command. Totally different from a game that plays by itself like ff12.

Fallout with VATS is perfect.