ScanSoft Speech Technology Enhances the New Mario Party 6 for Nintendo GameCube

PEABODY, Mass. - Nintendo has implemented a ScanSoft speech solution for the Nintendo GameCube™ game entitled Mario Party® 6. Using ScanSoft's speech recognition, players can control and interact with game characters.

As the sixth version of Nintendo's Mario Party series, Mario Party 6 is provides speech recognition technology to control certain mini-games. Using ScanSoft technology, the game will recognize an array of voices, including the voices of children. The game, which comes bundled with a microphone, allows players to use their voices in a variety of quizzes and select mini-games within the world of Mario Party 6. Using the Mic controller, users can bark orders at their racing character for motivation, or answer quizzes to earn extra stars to spend on game extras like Magic Books, hidden levels and game secrets.

"ScanSoft has a reputation for adding a level of creativity to a variety of applications," said Genyo Takeda, general manager, Integrated Research and Development at Nintendo Co., Ltd. "The software was extremely easy to integrate into Mario Party 6, and adds an incredible level of real-life interaction to the experience."

Integrated within Mario Party 6, SpeechWorks' solutions from ScanSoft VoCon® Games Speech SDK leverages ScanSoft's ASR 1600 engine. The following are features of the ScanSoft VoCon® Games Speech SDK:

• Phoneme-Based Speech Recognition - The VoCon Games Speech SDK features a phoneme-based speech recognition engine that uses signal processing techniques and speech recognition algorithms to provide voice recognition in different environments.
• Scalable Vocabulary - Game developers can create new vocabularies or enhance existing ones using a structured grammar format (BNF) featured in the VoCon Games Speech SDK.
• Speaker-Independent Acoustic Models - With VoCon Games Speech SDK, the end user can plug in the microphone and start playing with no training or system enrollment required.
• Children's Voice Support - Japanese and American English acoustic models have been trained with children's voices as well as the standard male and female adult voices.
• Multiple Recognition Modes - Game developers can associate actions with recognized words or phrases. End users can initiate speech commands in "push-to-talk" (or "intercom") mode or by talking directly in the microphone.