Roblox Expands to PlayStation, Introduces Immersive 3D Avatars and Voice Communication

Roblox has undergone significant changes to its code base, consolidating it into one platform for multiple devices, including PlayStation. This positions the company well for the potential growth of AR and VR devices in the future. In fact, Roblox has expanded its server count from 36,000 in 2021 to an impressive 135,000 servers today, quadrupling its capacity.

Excitingly, Roblox has also announced the upcoming launch of Roblox Connect, a groundbreaking communications experience set to debut later this year. With Roblox Connect, users will have the ability to engage in voice conversations using 3D-animated avatars, taking communication to a whole new level.

This immersive 3D communications experience will be open source, allowing developers to incorporate Roblox’s technology into their own applications. With a user base of 66.1 million monthly active users, Roblox aims to showcase the possibilities of deeper, more immersive communication.

Dan Sturman, CTO of Roblox, emphasized the company’s focus on three main themes: creating an immersive platform for communication and connection, ensuring accessibility across all devices, and fostering a vibrant virtual economy where anyone can participate.

Roblox Connect allows users to call their friends using their real names and facial expressions, creating a sense of togetherness in a shared immersive space. By utilizing sensors like webcams, Roblox captures and conveys users’ reactions, enabling deeper interactions and spontaneous communication.

Imagine calling a family member and selecting avatars and environments that match your preferences. You could sit together by a campfire or stand beside a waterfall, all while experiencing real-time facial expressions and body language through your avatars.

Roblox Connect utilizes AI models within the Roblox client to capture users’ facial expressions via webcams, ensuring efficient transmission and preserving privacy. This innovative approach allows for a more authentic and immersive communication experience.

During the initial launch, users will be able to choose from various locations such as forests and beaches, providing unique settings for connecting with friends and family. Roblox is also offering an API for developers to incorporate synchronous avatar communication into their own experiences on the platform.

AI Assistant

Roblox is also announcing Assistant, a conversational AI that makes creation on Roblox more accessible and empowers advanced creators to build richer, more engaging experiences faster. It takes the grind out of development, Sturman said.

Sturman believes availability for Roblox Assistant will probably be by the end of the year or early next year. He did a demo of it working on stage.

Assistant helps across the three phases of creation: learning, building, and coding. The technology will help creators build faster, iterate more, and augment their skills to create even better content, Sturman said.

Working with Assistant is collaborative and iterative, creators can provide feedback, and Assistant will work to provide the right solution. If you are looking for a tent, it will go out on the Roblox marketplace and find several different kinds of tents you could use, Sturman said.

“It’s just an Assistant to help me build a world better. And we think this has incredible potential to reduce friction for new creators on the platform,” Sturman said. “It dramatically accelerates existing creators on the platform.”

Previously, the company announced Code Assist, an AI assistant in Studio Script Editor that suggests lines or functions of code as developers type, helping them code more efficiently and stay focused.

Compared to a previous autocomplete solution, Roblox saw a two-fold increase in the amount of inserted code. Developers using our Code Assist are getting double the amount of code inserted into their experience, saving them time and effort.

Also, Roblox previously created a new material generator for an existing object like changing a car color to a metallic blue. Developers using the material generator beta created 50% more physically based rendering (PBR) materials than those not using material generator.

That means material generator made it faster and easier for developers to adapt materials.

To lower the costs of the generative AI, Roblox has implemented tools such as distillation, where you take a large language model (LLM) and you take out some of the functionality as you don’t need it for every kind of query. Roblox also does quantizing, where it reduces the complexity of the floating-point math. And Roblox does more inferencing on the CPUs based on how the data centers are laid out.

Expanding creation

As a step toward making it possible for anyone on Roblox to participate in the game economy, later this month, Roblox is inviting anyone who is ID-verified and has premium status to create 3D items in the Roblox marketplace.

What’s changing? Before this expansion, only UGC Program members could create 3D items.

It’s doing this because participation is the dynamic that powers the company’s economic flywheel: more creators make more content that people discover and buy, which leads to more opportunities for creators. Roblox cares about creating a marketplace with content that people love and where creativity is protected.

Safeguards

Roblox is also implementing safeguards that allow it to open the marketplace in a safe and civil way.

This includes ID verification, bringing more accountability to creators and publishing requirements that create incentives to motivate creators to publish things that they believe will sell.

“Safety is what separates us from the chaos that is the rest of the internet,” Sturman said.

He said Roblox won’t stop dealing with hackers and exploits until devs don’t have to worry about it at all. Roblox is creating APIs for devs for verification, banning, and text-filter level ratings. It will use voice moderation at scale to warn players about saying bad words and more in voice chat.

Roblox believes that the larger and more diverse our community is, the better it can fulfill the vision of offering something for everyone on the marketplace – enabling more self-expression across Roblox.

Avatars let people represent their identity and how they want to be seen on Roblox, so the company wants users to be able to create a wide range of skin tones, body sizes, hair colors, textures, and styles to enable self-expression. You can check out the 2022 Metaverse Fashion Trends’ Report that highlights the importance of self-expression on Roblox.

Subscriptions within experiences

Roblox is also building the tools for developers to create recurring subscriptions within their experience. This will be available later this year, said Manuel Bronstein, chief product officer at Roblox, at RDC.

The vision is to empower creators with the flexibility to build subscription-based offerings and business models — ultimately, Roblox wants them to be able to monetize in the way they think is best for their business.

Benefits to developers? This will help them to establish a recurring economic relationship with their users and potentially increase the predictability of their earnings. It will also help ensure users have a steady flow of content that’s relevant to them.

Roblox sees a future where it will be able to support creators who want to launch offerings such as: digital avatar “trunk clubs”; licenses for education experiences; and member-only fan clubs.

Updates to creator marketplace

Next year, Roblox plans to update the creator marketplace fees to enable asset and tool creators to keep 100% of the proceeds from the sale of their items—excluding tax and payment processing fees, Bronstein said.

“This is the highest revenue share in the market today” and it will lead to an amazing fly wheel early next year, he said.

The creator marketplace showcases the power of community – where users can find all assets that are by the creator community, for the creator community. These are tools to use within their experiences, such as models, images, meshes, audio, fonts, videos, and plugins.

Also coming next year is the ability for developers to sell models in addition to plugins, and a change to buy and sell assets in U.S. dollars instead of Robux, thus eliminating any Roblox platform fees.

Bronstein said 955 experiences crossed 5 million visits, 542 crossed 10 million visits and 30 crossed 100 million visits. Fifty five have crossed a billion visits. There are more than 11 billion impressions a day.

Avatar Outfit Creator saw 27% of earnings come in from immersive ads, Bronstein said.