Comments on: PlayStation 3 Offers News Channel With Evangelion Newscaster

By: CleruTesh

CleruTesh — Fri, 29 May 2009 05:10:31 +0000

Misato is WAY hotter.

By: Aoshi00

Aoshi00 — Fri, 29 May 2009 05:03:25 +0000

Thanks again for the link! Hm.. just listened to it, as expected sounds a little truncated and robotic which can't be helped. Is this the best they can do or they could still instill some warmth and emotion into her voice like the other sample, to make her sound more playful you know.

Mitsuishi Kotono was one of my favorite VA and Misato was one of the most memorable anime characters. I like this innovative idea a lot, but 800 yen for 30 days, wonder if you even get to keep the voice bytes or just like a monthly radio subscription thing..

By: TurkeyPotPie

TurkeyPotPie — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:33:45 +0000

Well, here you go. Apparently they did sample Mitsuishi Kotono's voice:

http://b.bngi-channel.jp/ps3_misato/p_movie.html

By: CleruTesh

CleruTesh — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:10:31 +0000

Misato is WAY hotter.

By: Aoshi00

Aoshi00 — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:03:25 +0000

By: TurkeyPotPie

TurkeyPotPie — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:33:45 +0000

Well, here you go. Apparently they did sample Mitsuishi Kotono's voice:

http://b.bngi-channel.jp/ps3_misato/p_movie.html

By: Pulstar

Pulstar — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:12:00 +0000

Heh.. Back when this show was airing Sega had a viable console in Japan and they sponsored NGE’s merchandise (hence at least one reference to Sega in the series). Really now most developers can’t get mecha games right so why the long faces?

By: Pulstar

Pulstar — Thu, 28 May 2009 07:14:44 +0000

It's the content that sucks, not the presentation. Besides with Jon Stewart who needs a crappy synthesized voice?

By: Aoshi00

Aoshi00 — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:29:44 +0000

Thanks for the link, I think this is all very fascinating too, of course I wouldn't understand technical aspect of it. I just listened to the several samples on the page, I think they might actually pull off a life-like Misato w/ some emotion. Also reading news requires a relative flat voice, plus like you said Japanese is a rather rigid language phonetically to begin w/.

I just re-read the post, too bad it's for Japan only.. it might turn up at Youtube once it's out at least..

By: TurkeyPotPie

TurkeyPotPie — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:14:14 +0000

Before anyone gets the wrong idea and think I'm completely down on this application, my concern is Sony's focus with some of these non-game apps (the thing they did with Bandai for Gundam videos, Life with Playstation, Folding at Home, etc.) From a tech and geek standpoint, I think these apps are very cool, but considering the position the PS3 is in I'd rather they focus on games.

That aside, I still find this app interesting. I did some digging on the Ruby Talk software. You can hear some samples here:

http://www.hitachi-ul.co.jp/middleware/rubytalk...

It's still quite obviously machine-generated voice, but it sounds pretty good and much better than Hatsune Miku. There is actual emotion there, and if it wasn't for the "stitched together" effect of the syllables, it could almost pass for real speech (I suspect the nature of spoken Japanese makes this sort of software easier than for something like English). I wonder if the software can be "modeled" after a real person's voice? That way you could end up with something that actually sounded like Misato.

The tech side of this interests me also. You can see that Hitachi has ported it to various SuperH processors (makes sense considering it's their own) as well as ARM and Xscale. The DS samples (running on ARM) don't sound nearly as good, but that makes sense considering how low-powered the DS ARM is. If this is running on the PS3, I guess Hitachi has ported this to the PowerPC and/or Cell APUs. I'd like to see more info on this, as I find this sort of tech fascinating.

By: Aoshi00

Aoshi00 — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:37:19 +0000

True.. if it's a paid service, it's probably for Jpn only. Still, if I could hear Misato's voice actress reading news headlines, I would gladly pay. If they really want to milk EVA again, they could just make another Rei-raising game, so we can make Rei swim w/ the sixaxis like FLOW, lol..

I wonder how the Speech synthesizer works, if it would sound like her at all, or Hatsun Miku robot-like. I don't think they're at a point to be able to simulate a real person's voice yet, at least w/ emotion.. otherwise they could've done it w/ Roshi or Tenshinhan in Dragon Ball Kai.

By: Spencer

Spencer — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:23:39 +0000

There isn't any information about a price, but I don't think this will be free. Like if this had the Sony cats I would believe it, but there's just too much money to be made with Eva.

By: Aoshi00

Aoshi00 — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:55:25 +0000

Oh.. I was wondering what it means.. so it's a voice program that sounds like Misato, like Hatsune Miku? What's the point of having Misato's face if it's not her seiyuu reading the lines.. Still this idea is very interesting, I hope it's not only limited to people in Japan.

By: Lucky

Lucky — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:46:37 +0000

They don't have VA do the voice though, it's stated it is done through a synthetic voice program.

I was hoping for an awesome Eva game. :(

By: Aoshi00

Aoshi00 — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:30:55 +0000

So is this a free channel on the PS3? Is it only limited to PS3 owners in Japan or can we access it thru PSN w/ Jpn accounts? This would be so cool, I was a huge Misato fan, haven't heard Mitsuishi Kotono in a long time, it seems like she's disappeared from the voice acting scene. Misato as a news anchor, bravo idea!