Microsoft Selects Nellymoser's Masquerade Speech Technology for Xbox Live

BOSTON, MA - Nellymoser Inc., a developer of speech and audio technologies, announced that Microsoft has licensed their Masquerade software to enable advanced voice chat features for Xbox multiplayer games and Xbox Live. Xbox Live is the online gaming service rolling out this Fall for the Xbox video game system from Microsoft. Nellymoser's Masquerade software provides real-time voice masking capabilities for online and multiplayer games. Using the Masquerade software, publishers can create titles where gamers will be able to completely alter the characteristics of their voice to create their own interactive online persona. Within game-play, players will now be able to morph their voices to that of the character they are currently playing. "Nellymoser has given gamers a great gift here," said J Allard, General Manager, Xbox Platform. "Developers are going to be able to let their imaginations run wild when they design voice masking elements in their games. For example, you could imagine a shy gamer sounding like an evil intergalactic overlord or a man with a baritone voice sounding like a high-pitched cartoon character. The sky is the limit and the gaming experience will never be the same again." Nellymoser's Masquerade uses patented VoiceFonts technology to enhance voice chat applications used for role-playing or voice disguising applications. The software transforms the human speech into a variety of other voices, ranging from a complete change of gender to altering the voice's pitch to make a natural sounding higher or lower speech. "By being selected as the voice masking software for the Xbox gaming environment, our software will be used to help define a new level of game-play," said John Puterbaugh, President & CTO of Nellymoser. "We're excited to be working with Microsoft to bring cutting-edge voice capabilities to Xbox games."