Speech Recognition in Nintendo's Brain Age Not So Smart...

spkydog came across this rather fun review of Nintendo's "Brain Age" game. The author's comments on this hit game are positive for the most part, until he gets onto the speech recognition functionality. spkydog has yet to play the game, but our current theory is that Nintendo might have licensed Vista's speech technology from Microsoft. ;-)

Just kidding on that last point of course! Microsoft's very own Richard Sprague makes a valid point in his posting regarding their recent demo debacle. To paraphase, people typically don't write about the 99 times the SR demo worked flawlessly. It is the failures that seem to be of human interest.

At the same time, unlike Vista, "Brain Age" is a shipping product on the DS. If the SR is really flakey on that platform (not surprising) it would of been better for everybody if they hadn't used the technology in this title to begin with. All it takes is a few high profile products that include less than acceptable speech technology to set up the negative stereotypes for yet another decade. If Microsoft does eventually get the speech technology right in Vista, it will be the most visible deployment of speech technology on the planet, and hopefully will do much in terms of helping the masses feel a bit less "buh-loo" about the readiness of speech technology in general.

Read the Brain Age review.