Alexa’s new Spartan Skill introduces new Personality, Alexios
Joining Alexa’s cohort of interactive gaming skills next month is an Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey Alexa Skill, called The Spartan which features a new personality named Alexios. Alexios is one of the two characters users may play in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. This is the 3rd game to develop an Alexa skill specifically for in-game use. Destiny 2 and Call of Duty both launched similar skills earlier this year. In June, Amazon also announced a stand-alone version of Skyrim for Alexa.
Alexios is available for use at home today and will be available for in-game use the same day as the full release of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on October 5th.
Capabilities of Alexios
At home, Alexios is being advertised as a different personality users can prompt instead of Alexa for over 1,500 different queries. For example, when prompted, “Alexa, ask The Spartan What’s the news?” Alexios could say,
The sirens lured another ship to its doom, Forty-five sailors died happily.
To activate Alexios, say “Alexa, open The Spartan.”
Players will be able to fight for either Athens or Sparta as one of two characters, each with their own storyline, says IGN. Users can prompt Alexa with questions to ask Alexios about a specific area in order to hear more about it’s origin. The key to using Alexios, either at home or in game is to ask Alexa to ask Alexios, which may prove to be a bit cumbersome during game play, but we will have to wait and see how users respond. For example:
Alexa, ask Alexios to tell me about the Battle of the Giants vs Gods
Alexios Compared to Prior In-Game Alexa Skills
The main differentiating factor between this Alexa in-game assistant and its predecessors is that Alexios can also be used at home, without playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. Ubisoft’s partnership with Amazon gives the company the ability to reach non-gamers by tapping into Alexa’s large user base. As discovered by Voicebot’s Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report in January of 2018, more than half of smart speaker owners report at least trying a game on their device and nearly one-third say they use them monthly to play games. And some voice experts, like Micheal Fitzpatrick, COO and president of PullString, believe that gaming along with communication, and commerce will be one of the driving factors in smart speaker adoption. Amazon’s recent partnerships with well-known role playing games are further evidence that Amazon sees the potential of gaming as a way to increase user engagement of Alexa as well.
