With all of the information that has come out regarding the upcoming Sony PlayStation 4, one of the few things that has to be made clear is how voice recognition will work.
Sony has finally announced that voice recognition will indeed be enabled on the PS4 and will work via the PlayStation Camera. It was reported back in May that Sony was hiring people to work on speech recognition software which initially sparked rumors that Sony would include the technology in the PlayStation 4.
PS4 voice recognition was seemingly confirmed in a report sent to EuroGamer and the camera’s voice recognition functionality appears to have been announced at the GameStop Expo in Las Vegas.
A Sony spokesperson told EuroGamer :
We can confirm that PS Camera does allow voice recognition. We will share more details on this shortly.
Microsoft has been talking a lot about the voice command functionality included in the Xbox One, but Sony has been very quite when it comes to the PlayStation camera. A video of the GameStop Expo presentation–which was meant for retail employees–includes a slide that detailed how the voice commands would work with the PlayStation Camera (see below.)
Even though voice recognition will be included in the PS4, it does not seem to be a major part of the device. Even though early reports had suggested that Sony would ship the PS Camera with the PS4 , we now know that it will be a separate purchase. This is different from how Microsoft is handling things, in which they have decided to bundle the Kinect with the Xbox One.
How advanced this voice functionality is, has yet to be unveiled. However, with Sony having to compete against the Xbox/Kinect which includes a significant amount of features, the PlayStation Camera should be able to do quite a bit.
What do you think? Will Sony heavily integrate voice commands into the PS4, or was the feature more of an after thought?