Before this CES, I thought gaming headsets were more sophisticated than ever. How many improvements can you make to your speakers and microphones? Well, forget all that. It’s clear that the future of gaming headsets is mind reading.
In a special presentation with A Fellow from IGN At this CES, I sampled a collaboration between gaming brand HP HyperX and brain-computer interface company nervous. Neurable has attended CES before, but most of its work has been in the defense and enterprise sectors. The idea behind the brand is specifically aimed at helping you focus your focus, and now, Neurable believes it can use that to help gamers.
Credit: Michelle Erhardt
Here’s how it works. Before trying out the Neurable x HyperX headset, I took a quick round in a target-shooting game, taking down 30 targets with a response time of 547ms. I was then guided through a concentration program called Prime. This showed a cloud of dots on the screen, and I was told to do whatever I needed to do to focus. I decided to stare into the distance and count, and in about 90 seconds, the dots reduced to a small ball and I was “ready.” Neurable also suggested focus techniques like repeating a word in your head over and over, or following a dot as it moves on the screen, but these didn’t work for me.
Then I tested the shooting again. In theory, I should have done better, but I actually scored slightly worse this time around – a response time of 559ms.
However, this response time isn’t bad, and your mileage may vary. Maybe it’s because I was already restricted before setup, and my colleague actually reduced the response time by about 40ms after setup.
If all this optimization sounds so important, well, yes. This is aimed at eSports players and streamers, where every second counts.
Credit: Michelle Erhardt
This is probably where the best feature of the headphones comes in for me. Along with Prime, Neurable and HyperX are also working on an overlay plugin for streamers that can show their attention level on screen. You can view it as a speed meter, as a cloud of dots, or even as a progress bar showing whether you’re “in tilt mode” or not. It should lead to some fun interactions with viewers, and work well with existing plugins, like eye trackers that show where the streamer is looking.
Additionally, the slightly worse response time after setup wasn’t completely useless. Neurable said the headset can be used to help you “practice choking,” where you self-inflict too soon after shutting down and end up in a worse position. I thought this might sound like marketing, but my colleague, a high-level striker in… World of WarcraftShe said it would be of real benefit to her.
What do you think so far?
This is still just a concept at the moment, but it’s exciting to see this type of technology poised to reach the mass market. What also sets Neurable apart is how easy it is to carry. Unlike other brain-computer interfaces, this looks like a regular headset, and all the contacts are stored in the ear cups. There’s no need for a giant helmet with discs and wires attached, thanks to Neurable’s expertise in artificial intelligence. The company says that using such a compact form factor results in a small amount of data, and a lot of junk, but thanks to the on-device AI model, it’s easily able to detect trends in your focus and translate them into something usable.
This seemed to be true in my demo, which, at the end of the day, felt like a kind of guided meditation with real-time feedback. You can use this for more than just gaming, but it’s a smart use case for digital mind reading, and the streaming plugins really take the cake, helping to solidify the concept into a clear product with a tangible purpose and target audience.
It will take some time for the gaming version of Neurable’s technology to be ready, though the company has said it hopes to release it this year. In the meantime, you can purchase a super-luxe mind-reading headset from Neurable, though it’s currently up for pre-order and will set you back $500. It also won’t come with Prime or a streaming add-on, although depending on the software, that may change in the future.