At its annual developer conference, Roblox detailed its plans for the near future to expand beyond its identity as a children’s gaming platform.
The company is already gearing towards new demographics — Roblox announced it would promote mature content for 17+ users earlier this year — and it looks like a new mobile video calling product launching later this year will. Part of that plan.
Part Zoom and part Memoji, users can connect with another friend who uses Roblox and start a virtual hangout in the new product called Roblox Connect. Voice calls bring two avatars together in a virtual space (a ship dock and camp site are examples), leveraging Roblox’s existing investment in facial motion tracking for a more present and immersive experience.
“In the near future, a person’s avatar will mirror their exact facial expression, down to the same blinking rate,” Roblox’s CTO and CPO wrote in the announcement. Roblox Connect will launch later this year and the company will make the product available to developers, opening it up to more innovations from within the creator community.
The product weaves together existing Roblox avatars, voice chat, and camera-based facial graphics into something that can differ from the traditional game-like worlds of the platform.
The company is also working on getting “more realistic” motion for its avatars down the road, and those plans may include motion mapping of hand gestures and upper body movement. These add-ons should also be widely available on basic consumer devices that can now run Roblox.
“Behind the scenes, we’re essentially assembling a Hollywood-style motion capture studio into something that works on a mobile phone or laptop — no motion-tracking equipment or points required,” the ad reads. “The device’s camera is all it takes to capture motion and translate it in real time.”
The company is betting that more people will want virtual avatars to express their feelings, but for now, the technology is usually inappropriate or annoying enough that it’s more of a tech party hoax than a go-to for drawn-out voice chat (see Also: Apple’s Memoji). However, the Roblox community is very committed to the platform and may appreciate new ways of communicating with each other – even those that haven’t really taken off anywhere else.
Other than Roblox Connect, the company had a series of other announcements at the developer event, including news that Roblox will finally be available on PS4 and PS5 starting next month. Like competitor Epic, maker of Fortnite, Roblox takes an aggressive cross-platform approach to making its app accessible and easy to use, and Sony’s gaming console has been the obvious missing piece to that strategy for a while now.