When skimming over the timeline for video game industry voice commands, the mechanism definitely is not new for the market. In the past, we witnessed the tool being utilized with first-party releases and partnered projects for respected hardware. Most recently, Microsoft attempted to create a norm for the peripheral with the Kinect at the start of the Xbox One console generation.

However, the feature only proved to do miscellaneous tasks like changing weapons, opening the pause menu, and other actions of the like. And alike the Kinect itself, the support eventually fell through as many titles dropped the initiative behind. But, voice commands are still used regularly with media apps and the welcoming of home devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

But to reintroduce the support to modern gaming, Electronic Arts might be only ticket for voice commands. In a new patent uncovered on patent database Patentscope, it is revealed the publisher is aiming to develop technology to control characters with voice commands.

Systems and methods are disclosed for enabling a player of a video game to designate custom voice utterances to control an in-game character. One or more machine learning models may learn in-game character actions associated with each of a number of player-defined utterances based on player demonstration of desired character actions.

During execution of an instance of a video game, current game state information may be provided to the one or more trained machine learning models based on an indication that a given utterance was spoken by the player. A system may then cause one or more in-game actions to be performed by a non-player character in the instance of the video game based on output of the one or more machine learning models.

So unlike what has been introduced in the past, the potential integration of Electronic Arts new technology would allow users to play games without the necessity of a controller. The project is in development currently presumed from the found patent and it is uncertain if the work will enter public domain in the end. While patents do foretell what a company works on, it is not written in stone.

After witnessing how well voice commands performed in the past, it is difficult to imagine the new initiative to stay any longer. But, if implemented efficiently enough, Electronic Arts could bring a whole new experience to gaming that other companies are for sure not including in its respected work.

Are you interested to see what this new technology can offer to gaming?

Source: Patentscope