Microsoft is bringing in-game chat transcription to Xbox One and Windows 10
More ways to communicate and more accessibility
Microsoft will soon introduce a new feature to Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs called Game Chat Transcription.
When enabled, the feature will work in two ways: players will be able to turn their chats from speech to text so that they can read their in-game chats on their screen in real-time, or they’ll be able to choose text to speech which will result in their typed text being spoken aloud to other players in the game.
The feature is intended to make multiplayer games more accessible experiences by giving players even more ways to communicate during games which is a wonderful thing to see.
However, outside of accessibility it’s also useful for players who want to participate in chat but have no desire to actually listen to it. We imagine the number of players that fall into that category is fairly high.
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Multiplayer mayhem
Just be prepared to see every awful thing that slips out of your mouth during the heat of gameplay laid down in writing before you.
It appears that the function has to be supported by the games themselves. Microsoft plans to bring chat transcription to its first title, Halo Wars 2, very soon. It’s said there are also plans to bring it to even more games in the future.
If you own Halo Wars 2 and you’d like to see the feature in action for yourself when it’s rolled out you simply have to go to the game’s settings section and into the ease of access tab.
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Here you’ll find the Game Chat Transcription tab which will allow you to select speech to text or text to speech as well as choose the voice that other players will hear when your chat text is read aloud from a preformed list.
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Emma Boyle is TechRadar’s ex-Gaming Editor, and is now a content developer and freelance journalist. She has written for magazines and websites including T3, Stuff and The Independent. Emma currently works as a Content Developer in Edinburgh.