Ubisoft and Tencent Will Try To Make NPCs Talk With Nvidia Tools

Gaming is going real and graphics processing unit (GPU) maker Nvidia is currently among the powerhouses bringing games to life. During the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2024, an annual trade show, the company introduced products across segments including content creation, gaming, and robotics. While the products were interesting enough, the GPU king also revealed major gaming companies that are going to use these tools to enhance their games.

NPCs Are Going Advanced

Companies including Ubisoft and Tencent are among those embracing the technology called Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE). They are likely to bring non-playable characters (NPCs) to life using artificial intelligence (AI) by making them interact with the player. Nvidia introduced ACE last year during the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2023 where the company founder assured that they will bring AI to all the industries.

The company also announced a couple of ACE microservices for NVIDIA Audio2Face and NVIDIA Riva Automatic Speech Recognition. Seth Schneider, senior product manager at Nvidia, explained the player’s voice is processed through multiple models to generate a prompt response by the NPC. He used the same video that the company showcased last year during ACE’s demo, just another character, dubbed Nova, was involved this time.

Interestingly, the models are designed to respond distinctly every time a player tries to interact. Seth approached the character three times in the same setting to interact. The responses were never alike. As “ACE AI models are designed to run in the cloud or locally on the PC,” it could also help people to enhance their vocal skills through gaming.

With organizations like Ubisoft and Tencent engaged with these technologies, the gaming community might see new concepts similar to the one showcased here, in the future. Both companies have tapped into the blockchain sector too. Tencent backs Web3 gaming firm Immutable while Ubisoft had already experimented with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the past.

Gamers have recognized that Blockchain technology and associated concepts have the capacity to expand the entertainment value in games. Notably, Ubisoft faced backlash from the community after announcing NFTs in association with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

Metaverse got ample attention following Facebook’s rebranding to Meta Platforms in 2021. The concept incorporates technologies like cryptocurrencies and NFTs that leverage blockchain. Other vital advancements being AI, 5G, Web3, and more, it is still a nascent concept as none of them have reached a level that serves such a concept.

Notably, Nvidia is working on the metaverse with Omniverse, a 3D graphics collaboration platform. Following the CES 2024 address, the chip maker’s stock price reached its all-time high, closing in at $548.22. It was in a downtrend pre-market, and was trading at $546.24 at press time.

Anurag is working as a fundamental writer for The Coin Republic since 2021. He likes to exercise his curious muscles and research deep into a topic. Though he covers various aspects of the crypto industry, he is quite passionate about the Web3, NFTs, Gaming, and Metaverse, and envisions them as the future of the (digital) economy. A reader & writer at heart, he calls himself an “average guitar player” and a fun footballer.