News recycling: Brain Age doesn't like your accent

[wraggster]

Bringing an old story back to the forefront with a new angle, BBC show Watchdog reports that Michelle Livesey of Manchester can't get Brain Training (Brain Age in the States) to recognize her saying "yellow" -- she's apparently not saying it "posh" enough. Although Watchdog added a new dimension with Brain Training's inability to recognize yellow, the original problem color blue is also in the mix. The issue is all in the accents.

According to Nintendo, on page 47 of the Brain Training manual it gives hints on how to use the voice recognition properly. Suggestion number four is: "Pronounce each word as clearly as possible, and try to avoid using strong dialects or accents." Just check out Nicole Kidman saying scissors in a Nintendo ad to see how things could go wrong with accents. Nintendo claims it has been continually monitoring the voice recognition efficiency in its software since the game launched in June '06. We believe them, just as long as we don't have to say the color blue, or yellow if we're from Manchester.
Continue reading News recycling: Brain Age doesn't like your accent

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/05/ne...e-your-accent/

[phsychokill]

blue and yellow doesnt work for the north east of england either but i still saying the hand writing recognition is worse.

[Mikey242]

Did anyone watch this? Did you hear how Michelle pronounced yellow and blue! Im not surprised that the DS didn't recognize her, or even some of the other people. Obviously this game cannot be made to accommodate all accents so naturally it is based on a "neutral" english accent.

[goddammitdre]

HAHAH .. I remember one of my friends was being funny one day and was playing through Brain Age and he said "Yellow."

(We live in New York, so you'd think that would be clear enough)

Well, the game doesn't wanna recognize it, so he goes "UGH .. stupid asians and their video games..." and says "YERROW" just to see what happens.

Lo and behold, the game recognizes it just fine :\