Microsoft gets patent to bleep you out

Looks like Microsoft is taking a page out of Nintendo’s book and making gaming a bit more family-friendly. A new patent from Microsoft suggests that they might introduce a live censoring filter that bleeps out swear words. Yeah, no more swearing, you d- *bleep*.

Looks like Microsoft is taking a page out of Nintendo’s book and making gaming a bit more family-friendly. A new patent from Microsoft suggests that they might introduce a live censoring filter that bleeps out swear words. Yeah, no more swearing, you d- *bleep*.

Microsoft applied for the patent back in 2004, but was only approved recently by the USPTO. The patent describes a way to automatically censor words that have “undesired speech data,” making them “unintelligible or inaudible.”

The patent doesn’t explicitly state a system they’ll introduce the bleeping to, but don’t be surprised if it comes to Xbox Live. It’s not exactly a place where you can build your vocabulary. I hope this doesn’t cause my game to lag though.

Good news for the masochists out there who like the abuse. The patent also suggests that the filter can be turned on or off. “The censored speech can either be stored or made available to an audience in real-time.”

Via USPTO