Amazon's adding voice-powered gaming to big name games with Alexa Game Control

[DC]

In gaming accessibility news, Amazon has announced it is launching a voice control system for video games called Alexa Game Control. The first compatible title will be “Dead Island 2.” Gamers can use the system whether they have a Prime account or just a regular Amazon account. 

[Gonassis]

interesting development in tech, I liked the previous dead island games, let's see how useful this function will be.

or will it just be an ignored "doohicky" 😁

[killamch89]

I have one word for this - NOPE!

[Clasher]

This is interesting, so we could just give a voice command and the video game automatically loads on our screen. 

Well that's good and I am looking forward to what this technology would be like when it is eventually released to the market.

[Empire]

making more games easy or just adding more available tech that we can use in our hands. Cool to try it out but not into voice things

[Kane99]

That's awesome of them. I hope this can be used for many things, like controlling more video games down the line. It's always good news when accessibility is advanced in gaming. From the likes of the Xbox One adaptive controller and now this, imagine combining these tools to make it even easier to control games and do other things like coding, development, etc. 

[Justin11]

I have my regular Amazon account, but unfortunately for me I don't own 'Dead island II game to access the voice control 'Alexa Game Control. But nevertheless, it's a welcome development for gamers to explore, I'm grateful to see Amazon walking in the path of video game revolution. 

[Kane99]

1 hour ago, Justin11 said:

I have my regular Amazon account, but unfortunately for me I don't own 'Dead island II game to access the voice control 'Alexa Game Control. But nevertheless, it's a welcome development for gamers to explore, I'm grateful to see Amazon walking in the path of video game revolution. 

Dead Island 2 will be the first game to utilize the feature, it's currently not out yet though. It was recently revealed during gamescom, but I don't think they announced an official release date just yet. Though I'm going to guess fall of 2023 or so. 

[Heatman]

I'm not even sure how that's going to work but I suppose that it's a good development in one way or another. 

If it becomes effective, then kudos to Amazon as they would reap a lot of success from it. 

[Kane99]

4 hours ago, Heatman said:

I'm not even sure how that's going to work but I suppose that it's a good development in one way or another. 

If it becomes effective, then kudos to Amazon as they would reap a lot of success from it. 

It'll probably go off voice prompts. So saying shoot to shoot your gun, reload to reload, run to run. General things like that. Saying turn left to turn left. It'll be used in combination with the controller I imagine for some. 

That would be my guess anyway. I imagine it works off of certain prompts and phrases. 

[Withywarlock]

14 hours ago, Kane99 said:

It'll probably go off voice prompts. So saying shoot to shoot your gun, reload to reload, run to run. General things like that. Saying turn left to turn left. It'll be used in combination with the controller I imagine for some. 

That would be my guess anyway. I imagine it works off of certain prompts and phrases. 

That'd be my guess as well, but I'm clueless as to why Dead Island 2. Why not a game that has lots of micromanaging that's faster with voice rather than going through a visual interface, such as a real-time strategy (RTS) game? One such example was Tom Clancy's EndWar which had exceptionally responsive voice commands, which was necessary because of how much time could be wasted issuing commands in a rather hectic game.

For the record I'm not against Dead Island 2 being 'hands-free' eventually. I can't see Alexa Game Control being ready and Amazon do not possess a good track record for developing their ideas, especially in the tech space. If this flops it might be the last time we see a hands-free game for a long time, especially on a scale that Amazon could do it if it goes well. Not to mention how Dead Island 2 has been in development Hell; it'll be a miracle if either of these projects launch successfully.

I hope, for the sakes of voice-controlled video games more than Amazon or Dead Island's dignity, this works out. It'd be such a well-needed leap for accessibility in games.

[Heatman]

On 8/28/2022 at 8:05 PM, Kane99 said:

It'll probably go off voice prompts. So saying shoot to shoot your gun, reload to reload, run to run. General things like that. Saying turn left to turn left. It'll be used in combination with the controller I imagine for some. 

That would be my guess anyway. I imagine it works off of certain prompts and phrases. 

It might be able to work like that in shooting games but I think that it's something that's going to have to deal with a serious challenge if there would be something sort of hand combat. Something like the combat system in MK Games. It's going to be very difficult to use voice control. 

[killamch89]

On 8/29/2022 at 4:53 AM, Withywarlock said:

That'd be my guess as well, but I'm clueless as to why Dead Island 2. Why not a game that has lots of micromanaging that's faster with voice rather than going through a visual interface, such as a real-time strategy (RTS) game? One such example was Tom Clancy's EndWar which had exceptionally responsive voice commands, which was necessary because of how much time could be wasted issuing commands in a rather hectic game.

For the record I'm not against Dead Island 2 being 'hands-free' eventually. I can't see Alexa Game Control being ready and Amazon do not possess a good track record for developing their ideas, especially in the tech space. If this flops it might be the last time we see a hands-free game for a long time, especially on a scale that Amazon could do it if it goes well. Not to mention how Dead Island 2 has been in development Hell; it'll be a miracle if either of these projects launch successfully.

I hope, for the sakes of voice-controlled video games more than Amazon or Dead Island's dignity, this works out. It'd be such a well-needed leap for accessibility in games.

I know it's definitely going to flop - most of the ideas they ever came up with were from smaller companies they bought out. If I remember correctly, I can't recall them really ever developing an idea from scratch.

[Heatman]

35 minutes ago, killamch89 said:

I know it's definitely going to flop - most of the ideas they ever came up with were from smaller companies they bought out. If I remember correctly, I can't recall them really ever developing an idea from scratch.

These companies are always in the habit of buying up smaller companies and merging it with their own in order to make their company is bigger. It has been the order of the day for a very long time now, it's why we were able to see Microsoft purchase Activision Blizzard recently. 

[Kane99]

I read more into what they are offering with these voice options and honestly I think it's really cool. Not only will it help with accessibility for some, it could be a useful tool to interact with your game even better. Talking to NPCs and stuff, doing certain commands and so on. It sounds a lot more advanced than what I first thought.