MeMeMe Partners with Entertainment Software Rating Board for Mobile Voice Recognition Services
MeMeMe has partnered with the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), an independent agency that rates video games, to enhance the user-interface of the ESRB's mobile applications for Apple, Android, and Windows Phone devices.
According to Randy Walker, ESRB's vice president of marketing, "Adding MeMeMe's voice recognition technology to our apps greatly improved the user-interface (UI) by enabling users to simply say the game title into their phone, which initiates a rating search of our entire database. This helps parents and other consumers choose which video games are appropriate for their children and family by providing the complete rating information along with rating summaries, right in the store where they are most likely to need it. And the voice search makes accessing this helpful information quicker and easier than ever before."
The ESRB ratings include two equal parts: age ratings, which appear on the front of game packages, and content descriptors, found on the back, which identify content in a game that either triggered the rating or might be of interest or concern to parents. In 2008, the ESRB began offering a supplemental source of information called rating summaries, which provide brief but detailed descriptions of exactly the type of content that is in each game. The mobile app powered by MeMeMe's technology makes it possible, for the first time, for shoppers to obtain the ratings information that they need while in the store and to search ESRB's entire database of rated games, including rating summaries for those titles that have such summaries.
"Working with MeMeMe and their team of developers provided access to cutting-edge technology and expertise that we don't have internally," Walker said, noting that the MeMeMe-powered application not only creates "a much improved user experience," but that this improved experience will translate directly into "a big lift in downloads and utilization for our apps."