A rumour is floating around the web (if I had a penny..) that the Wii will have sophisticated voice recognition. Very sophisticated, by the looks of it. A member from gaming giant IGN’s message boards reports that the “the system works using an advanced voice recognition system, which Nintendo has been developing for several years.” Before you leave, let me finish up. This came from the same guy that reported that the Wiimote would have a speaker. BEFORE Nintendo. That’s right, sit back down.

From his post, “When a user speaks the sound is converted into on screen text and sent to the other players. However, rather than just plain text being sent, the system also picks up the tone, pitch and volume of the voice and translates that into colour, font size and character set. For example, if a player shouts ‘I win’ loudly into the microphone, the on screen text may be all capitalized, and in a large red font; conversely if a player speaks quietly the font may be a pastel shade and smaller.”

This sounds good; there are a million ideas that could go with this. Slandering mates after matches of Red Steel, singing games or issuing commands to comrades, eg: SOCOM headset. Looks like another fun and innovative idea from Nintendo *adds score to board*. The member goes on to add that accessories from the DS and Wii will be able to interact with each other and communicating will be achieved through head-mounted microphones. How awesome would it be to shout “Loser!” (or other insults that we can’t print here), into your mates screen after kicking his ass at Super Smash Brothers?

Finally, the member states that Nintendo is working on a ‘voice to text communication’ element, aimed towards children. I can see this being used to help disabled kids, helping them to read and whatnot. Go to school and play your DS? Everybody wins!

This all hinges on said member’s reliability of course. But, he is respected and trusted. For all those sceptics out there, check out this patent. This’ll get your juices flowing. Bet that opened your un-trusting eyes huh? Ok I’m done, you can go now.

- Aaron Kleemann