Gaming News Round-Up: January 14th, 2005

Today's round-up includes news of Jamdat's expansion into China, and Nintendo's partnering with ScanSoft for Mario Party 6's voice recognition. - Mobile gaming developer and publisher Jamdat Mobile Inc. has announced its investment in C-Valley, a Chinese mobile games distributor, in order to give Jamdat's games a wider reach in China. C-Valley is a Beijing-based company with ties to China Mobile and China Unicom, two of the largest wireless carriers in the world. Mitch Lasky, Chairman and CEO of JAMDAT Mobile Inc, remarked: "We will bring our entertainment content to the burgeoning Chinese market through C-Valley's relationships with wireless carriers, handset manufacturers and retailers." - ScanSoft, Inc. has announced the release of a speech recognition SDK for the Nintendo GameCube. ScanSoft's middleware was used in the recently-released Mario Party 6, which came bundled with a microphone for use with many of the new voice-activated minigames. ScanSoft's SDK will, according to the company, ease the process of integrating the new GameCube microphone into future GameCube software, should other developers choose to take advantage of Nintendo's new peripheral. Currently, the GameCube microphone is only available as part of a software bundle that includes Mario Party 6.