Microsoft has been constantly looking at new ways to make gaming more accessible. The next step in that process is providing Game Chat Transcription in games on both the Xbox One and Windows 10. The company announced that it is piloting a new Game Chat Transcription feature in Halo Wars 2, with the hope of bringing it to more games in the future.
The new feature works in two ways: by providing speech-to-text or text-to-speech. In the first, voice communications are transcribed into text which shows up in a box on the screen. In the second, typed text is spoken back to gamers so they can hear what’s being typed out.
Depending on your gaming platform, there are a couple of different ways to enable the feature.
On Xbox One
- Go to Settings > All settings > Ease of Access > Game chat transcription.
- To transcribe other players’ voices into text, select Speech-to-text.
- To have your chat text read aloud to other players, select Text-to-speech. To choose the voice that other players will hear when your chat text is read aloud, select one of the available voices in the Text-to-speech voice menu.
On a Windows 10 PC
- Open the Xbox app and go to Settings > General > Game chat transcription.
- To transcribe other players’ voices into text, select Speech-to-text.
- To have your chat text read aloud to other players, select Text-to-speech. To choose the voice that other players will hear when your chat text is read aloud, select one of the available voices in the Text-to-speech voice menu.
The game chat window may move around in game so as not to cover important portions of the screen during gameplay. As with any transcription service, Microsoft also notes that there may be a brief lag and some misspelled words. Hopefully, these issues will improve over time as more people test and use the service.
Have you had a chance to test out the Game Chat Transcription in Halo Wars 2? If so, how did you find it? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/accessibility/2017/03/15/game-chat-transcription-feature-available-today-in-halo-wars-2-for-xbox-one-and-windows-10-pcs/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Microsoft[/button][button link=”http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/ease-of-access/use-game-chat-transcription” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Xbox Support[/button]
