Sony job listing hints at speech recognition for PlayStation 4

Rumours surrounding Sony’s next-gen console offering – the PlayStation 4 – have slowed down quite a bit since the company unveiled it back in February, but it doesn’t mean that there are no rumours at all. Sony has posted a job listing on LinkedIn looking for a Speech Recognition Engineering Intern for its SCEA San Francisco studio. This hints to the PlayStation 4 having speech-recognition capabilities, much like the Xbox 360’s Kinect does.

Speech recognition could be interesting if pulled off right

Despite there being no mention of the PlayStation 4 anywhere in the job listing, there are hints about it because of the fact that Sony is looking for an intern for one of its Sony Computer Entertainment studios. According to the job listing, “the required performed tasks include (but not limited to) speech noise reduction, speech detection, recognition, noisy rejection, and grammar processing under various environments.”

The PlayStation 4 was unveiled by Sony at an event back in February. Other than the fact that it will be the first console by Sony to run on the x86 architecture, the console will also have 8GB of DDR5 memory. The controller has also been redesigned. Although it still has the same look as that of the older DualShock controllers, the new one, dubbed DualShock 4, has a touchpad in the middle which is flanked by a Share button on one side and an Options button on the other. Other than the touchpad and these buttons, the centre of the controller is completely devoid of the traditional start and select buttons. According to rumours, the console will begin shipping towards the end of the month in time for the holiday season.