Product: Talkman Euro Uses Nuance Voice Recognition

Nuance Communications confirmed that Sony Computer Entertainment utilized voice recognition technology from Nuance to speech-enable the recent European and Japanese release of Talkman Euro for the PSP. The software, which was released in late-May in Japan and mid-June in Europe, is a portable language entertainment tool and interactive phrasebook that allows users to communicate more than 3,000 phrases in six languages. Using Nuance's voice recognition middleware, VoCon Games Speech SDK for PSP, Talkman Euro can recognize Japanese, British English, French, German, Italian and Spanish phrases using a dedicated microphone designed for the PSP. The voice-activated system provides translations for situations that a user may encounter while traveling to a foreign destination, such as at a hotel, train station, restaurant, ski resort, police station or night club. Users speak phrases in their native languages, and the system then translates the phrase and repeats it in the selected language. Talkman also includes two games that challenge language fluency. The first Talkman, released in Japan and other Asian countries in November 2005, also employed Nuance's VoCon Games Speech SDK for PSPto support four languages including Japanese, American English, Chinese, and Korean. VoCon Games Speech SDK for PSP, one of Nuance's solutions in the VoCon product line of embedded speech recognition engines, has provided speech recognition technology for the creation of several games since 1999. The VoCon product line has also been widely deployed in car navigation systems, mobile devices and console games. "We created a new level of realism in the game play by adopting speech recognition as the natural interface between the player and the gaming characters, bringing an unprecedented game experience to the international gamers community," commented Yoshiteru Yamamoto, creator of the Talkman series and producer of SCE Worldwide Studios Japan Studio. "Nuance's Speech SDK has proven to be a very flexible software development tool to incorporate speech recognition engine in Talkman Euro." "Speech technologies continue to revolutionize traditional applications such as gaming," said Alan Schwartz, vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific and Japan, Nuance. "This application is a stellar example of our impact, and we look forward to working with SCE in the future as it develops other new titles that incorporate this exciting new interface."