Revolution info/speculation from ex Nintendo employee

[Nexiss]

It's more a matter of practicality (or practical uses) then come up with simple uses.

I think there are many very practical uses for games like RTSs, Shooters and RPGs. Especially when we are talking about a console environment where you don't have the wealth of "buttons" that comes with your keyboard.
As for shouting at the game. Well, I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I don't know of many people who don't "interact" verbally with their games already.

Room for improvement, sure. However there has been mature technolgy in voice recognition for a long time. I don't think Nintendo is going to come along and re-design voice recognition to finally make it work perfectly. That I just don't see happening.

Certainly, I think if there is any validity to this rumour then it is most likely just that Nintendo is making some sort of mic standard and providing voice recognition libraries to devs.
Speech recognition itself can still improve, but getting back to those practical uses... To do some of the really neat things one might imagine with voice control requires more than just being able to pick out the words a person is saying. You also need to understand what these words mean, which can be a very complex problem by itself (if you want to move beyond just simply barking out commands).

 

[blakjedi]

Menus. Just use menus.

 

[Refreshment]

Regarding the voice controls.

Practicality aside, i think is about humanize a gaming interface. Let's take the essential example from some past weeks until today: Nintendogs. I think the game would be less atractive if you didnt have the voice input and touch control in the interface.

Having the mic by default can be a good option, keyword here is "option." A mic isnt an expensive device to include. Of course theres more to voice recognition than a simple mic, but if Nintendo has made some advances to let developers integrate it into games more easily, then thats great.

 

[Qroach]

f I'm no programer , but i would assign each squad member a letter or name and have the bot react to commands given to that name. I would then have key words like north , attack , left right .

Ok well keywords are what we have now, but my question is how do you make that squad, say you want to pick certain guys to be in each squad?
Also I think it's much faster to have a squad assigned to a button, pick where they want to go by looking at it and hitting another button.

I belive its much simpler . What is eaiser telling your friend to do something or to go step by step through it for them to do it ?

Well, that depends on what I'm telling my friend to do, right? if I'm telling my friend to open a door in a room full of doors, or make a pizza. Ethier way i gotta do it step by step so they don't mess up. It's either that or you only ask for simple things.

I can tell you my father would have a much easier time telling the bot he wants to be covred from certian areas then having to remember they key inputs for that set up or to go into a menu and select this and stop the game play.

How is your dad going to know what to say, inorder to make them do what he needs if you have a larger vocabulary to use? That's the biggest problem with anything more advanced then what we have now. That's why i don't think we'll see an improvement or some sort of change.

Don't make me laugh. There is allways a first for everything . Right now it may be words and short sentences but does that mean it will stay this way ? Does that mean that nintendo hasn't been developing this to its fullest for the last 5+ years ? Things change. Once there was 2d graphics , then there were 3d graphics . Are you telling me at the time of the console move to 3d you would have pointed at the fx chip and the 32x and said well 3d has only been capable of fairly simiple models with flat shaded polgons . Nothing big , don't see how sony could have textures and thousands of polygons on screen at once. Wont happen ?

No I wouldn't say won't happen regarding 3D, as we had 3d long beore that. To be honest, polygons have a more practical use compared to voice commands. I don't really think that's a fair apples to apples comparrison.

Because thats exactly what you are saying right now . Because voice commands are fairly simple right now that nintendo wont have a more complex voice command system next year.

I'd be willing to wager that's not the case and IF nintendo has any voice rec software included in the gamecube it will have the same capabilites we have today (i.e not more advanced) and that's the point I was saying from the start.

I don't know what games had it in the famicon days . I don't remember any voice command tech games , but i highly doubt its a ssimple as it was back then .

You basically yelled into the controller at the right time to get bonus points. It's not unlike the DS with nintendogs except it didn't matter what you yelled I beleive. Anyway, it advanced beyond that point, but hasn't made a whole lot of strides lately.

But i rather be disapointed that nintendo tried to do something more innovative than more graphics and came up short than for nintendo not to have tried at all.

Um, why would anyone want to be dissapointed?

 

[Teasy]

How about if Revolution allowed any command in a game to be assigned to any word or phrase without any developer involvement? Just like changing your button layout. But instead you click on a function, reload for instance, and say reload and its then assigned. That would be something new and if Nintendo could make it work well it would be an excellent feature.

 

[gurgi]

That would be pretty cool Teasy, as long as developers had a bit of control. Reloading is a perfect example...it shouldn't be a voice only command, because to reload I think you should at least have to reach over and push something. Reloading should not only delay your shooting, it should require physical coordination, just like reloading a real gun. In fact, reloading shells into a shotgun should require a button push for each shell. Clips should require a button be held down until it's in. At least imo.


Cool ideas though.

 

[Teasy]

Yeah basically what I mean is developers could make a game with voice recognition or without it, so they have full control. But either way the end user has the option of adding voice control for any of the functions in the game just as easily as assigning buttons on a controller. So for instance if your of the opinion that reload should always be a button (which I agree with personally) then you can do it that way. But if your the kind of lazy person who can't even be bothered to press reload then you can assign reload to a word easily. Or of course assign some more appropriate functions to a word or phrase If Nintendo could make it easy, very reliable and robust I think it would be a excellent feature.

 

[pc999]

If I am not wrong Ghost Recon 2 already uses some nice voice recg. anyone tested here?It has good ( few flaws etc...)?

About splinting teams even in militar ops their are pre made, so why not in games to?

 

[pc999]

BTW in this site they make military (official) games and in one of them (dont remember which)you could see really nice voice recg (video too).
Dont know if it would run in a consoles CPU but...

http://www.ict.usc.edu/disp.php

Edit

There is the video

http://www.ict.usc.edu/disp.php?bd=proj_mre

 

[V3]

Ok well keywords are what we have now, but my question is how do you make that squad, say you want to pick certain guys to be in each squad?

Can't you do it military style ? How did they do it ? By rank and name I think. That would be cool.

 

[Qroach]

Matt Responds:

http://cube.ign.com/mail

"Oh yes, Aries. For people who haven't been following the avalanche of rumors being spread over at the Broken Saints message boards, here is a quick recap: a poster named Aries alleges he is a developer with all sorts of inside Revolution and next-gen information, and he's been posting sizeable chunks of it on a daily or weekly basis. He's written pages on various subjects and up until recently I've done my best to avoid it, but then a helpful IGN message boarder conveniently put together all of Aries' comments in one tidy thread, and I checked it over.

I guess lots of people have been waiting for me to comment on these posts and either qualify or disqualify the guy. So here it is. Everything he's said is true. Completely true. I can't believe he spilled it all already!

If you immediately stopped reading and raced to the message boards to post a "Matt Confirms!!!11" topic, you've really made a jackass out of yourself. Well done. If, on the other hand, you've continued reading, even better.

Honestly, this Aries guy is a fake. But I have to give to him: he's a pretty good one. He's definitely on top of the industry and some of his predictions -- guesses, even -- are logical. He's made an accurate guess or two about certain things not related to Revolution. And he remains just vague enough in most cases to perpetuate his credibility.

But he goes too far. The simple truth is that nobody in the industry, except for possibly Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda, could know as much about Revolution as this guy claims he does. I don't care if he worked for Nintendo of America for 30 years. Nobody at Nintendo of America, including the highest-ranking executive, has the kind of access Aries professes he does. Nobody. And I have enough contacts in the development industry to know that advanced Revolution hardware is not in high circulation. I mean, some of the biggest publishers out there have yet to receive any information on the platform. Trust me on this. Some of these outlandish claims Aries makes are just bogus. And that's really the biggest giveaway.

I'm sure some of you would love to believe the guy. He makes Nintendo look like gold. But don't. Wait a couple weeks for the real deal."

 

[3dcgi]

Ok well keywords are what we have now, but my question is how do you make that squad, say you want to pick certain guys to be in each squad?
Also I think it's much faster to have a squad assigned to a button, pick where they want to go by looking at it and hitting another button.

I think voice control will work best as a supplement to the interface so in this situation you could select the squad with the controller and tell it where to go with voice. There are many possibilities and I doubt we'll see many games that truly rely on voice command. Voice command will be truly useful when developers figure out how to filter out background voices and can pick out a specific voice. Then it becomes useful in a group environment and you could come up with some fun party games.

 

[PC-Engine]

What are the chances Revolution or even Evolution will get this technology?

http://www.dvd-intelligence.com/main_sections/news_archive/2003_free/3_wmd_demo.htm

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Voice command will be truly useful when developers figure out how to filter out background voices and can pick out a specific voice. Then it becomes useful in a group environment and you could come up with some fun party games.

I think the right sort of mic would help. A very insensitive mic that has to be positioned right by the mouth for example.

Anyway, this isn't something unique to Revolution in that the other couldn't do it. As a software thing MS and Sony can release their own Voice Recognition libraries. The Revolution had better be more than that!

 

[oli2]

my 2 cents :
- About Matt's comment at IGN : IF Nintendo is to make a big announce about revolution at E3, i think more people than Iwata or Miyamoto has to be aware of the hardware setup of the machine (i mean if extra feature such as vr is to be shown). It seems clear that noone can prepare a conference in a day or two. I don't say that to imply that anything said by the poster is/will be verified, but Matt's answer is a bit "light".

- About VR : it is not even debatable that correctly implemented in the machine, and correctly used by the developer, it can be a huge "plus" in many type of games.
As exemples :
+ Imagine the effect in a D&D like RPG to simply have to say "fireball" to throw it to your opponent !
+ PC RTS or RPG (i think to war of warcraft) could be adapted easily in most aspects. For example, you could say "mock" and not go to the contextual menu, then select your gimmick and validate, or simply say "Management", "skills", sword", "level up".
+ As already said, in RE4 you could say "reload". As a compensation, fellows coming to you could be a little faster. That would be a plus to this wonderful game.

 

[Qroach]

I think you should listen to what Matt is saying, as he would have a better idea then some random person on the internet of what nintendo is doing.

 

[PC-Engine]

I think using voice to change weapon types in a FPS or RE5 would be awesome ie shotgun, rifle, knife, grenades.

 

[oli2]

I think you should listen to what Matt is saying, as he would have a better idea then some random person on the internet of what nintendo is doing.

I re-read carefully that ...

But he goes too far. The simple truth is that nobody in the industry, except for possibly Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda, could know as much about Revolution as this guy claims he does. I don't care if he worked for Nintendo of America for 30 years. Nobody at Nintendo of America, including the highest-ranking executive, has the kind of access Aries professes he does. Nobody. And I have enough contacts in the development industry to know that advanced Revolution hardware is not in high circulation. I mean, some of the biggest publishers out there have yet to receive any information on the platform. Trust me on this. Some of these outlandish claims Aries makes are just bogus. And that's really the biggest giveaway.

... and i maintain what i have said.
If advanced features are to be shown at E3 (i mean with demo and not only words), someone has to be aware ... If Matt is correct and nothing is on the road nowhere now, we can assume nothing will be shown at E3. This comment is not related to the credibility i give to the poster of these rumors. Until there is official announcement, they are only "rumors".

 

[Qroach]

You're just justifying your belief in the rumors (made by a person that doesn't really know anything for certain, as confirmed by matt) by focusing on one comment Matt made, which was basically an exageration. The only comment from Matt you need to focus on is this one.

Honestly, this Aries guy is a fake. But I have to give to him: he's a pretty good one. He's definitely on top of the industry and some of his predictions -- guesses, even -- are logical. He's made an accurate guess or two about certain things not related to Revolution. And he remains just vague enough in most cases to perpetuate his credibility.

 

[Jon Brittan]

Exactly, like any good fake, regurgitate a bit of what is already known, re-word some of the most common speculation and add a bit of what you think people want to hear...

Generally you're aiming at people who are desperate to believe what they read anyway, so as long as you don't shoot yourself in the foot immediately and can provide some semi-credible data you can start to expand into the realms of complete fiction pretty quickly and have people hanging off your every word.

Maybe Aries should have employed himself elsewhere, it's election time in the UK