Microsoft plans to soon begin rolling out a new chat transcription feature that converts game voice chat to text.
The feature is set to soon be available to Xbox One and Windows 10 users, with Halo Wars 2 being the first game to support it. While primarily accessibility-related — which is a great move on Microsoft’s part — the ability to transcribe player voices to text could be useful for gamers who don’t want to hear a 12-year-old scream obscenities at them and instead would rather read a stream of swear words in text form.
Alternatively, the feature could also be useful for Xbox Live subscribers who want to save a game chat audio message as text.
According to Microsoft, game voice chat to text will need to be added to games on an individual basis and won’t be an overarching Xbox One Xbox Live Party Chat option.
Game chat transcription is enabled by heading to the Ease of Access settings on the Xbox One and then enabling speech-to-text. There’s also an option called text-to-speech that will read text chat aloud to other player.
The new feature even allows players to change the voice that reads the text out loud. It’s likely that gaming YouTubers will find a variety of nefarious purposes for text-to-speech, so get ready for a barrage of ‘Lets Play’ commentary videos with strange voices.
Source: Microsoft
