Games are now ”experimenting” between the two spectrums. BioWare’s Mass Effect 3 uses Kinect voice commands but needs a controller, noted Durkin.
”I think one part of Kinect is making sure that Kinect is relevant for whatever audience you have. We certainly have a core audience. We want to make sure that Kinect experiences are great for them. But the key word in that is experiences,” explained Dennis Durkin.
”And it’s got to be experience driven. So we’re not dogmatic about, ‘Hey, no controller. It’s got to be 100% no controller.’ What you’re seeing is a lot of experimentation across that spectrum of, ‘Hey, here’s a totally controller based experience that’s been a controller based experience for 10 years, so people are very, very ingrained in how they interact in that experience,’ to, ‘Here’s the other end of the spectrum, which is a totally Kinect-based experience.”
”You don’t need a controller.’ I think what you’re seeing is a lot of those games which were firmly entrenched in this one category, which were controller only, are now experimenting.” Microsoft is keen to promote Kinect adding to a game’s immersion.
”And across that spectrum, whether it be leveraging voice to do menu navigation, or to command troops - you saw Mass Effect - leveraging that within this ecosystem to decide which path do I want to go down and using that or directing troops,” he added.
”So I think you’re seeing experimentation with voice. You saw it with gunsmith inside the Tom Clancy world, which used both voice and gestures. And you saw head tracking inside of Forza. So there’s all this experimentation that’s happening across that spectrum, and all those people are trying to make whatever experience it is - whether it’s a soldier’s experience in Ghost Recon, whether it’s a driver’s experience in Forza… whatever kind of experience it is, it’s just to try to make that experience better and easier for that user.”
Most importantly Microsoft isn’t pressuring studios to include Kinect just for the sake of it, says CFO Durkin: ”I don’t think we’re trying to put any input paradigm, enforce that on anyone, unless it’s better. We’re not trying to force anything.”
”If people want to do it and they think it enhances the experience, I think consumers will embrace it and they’ll do it, but that’s the bar that they’ll expect. And there will be a bunch of experimentation, some of it will work and some of it won’t.”
”The things that work, people will emulate and they’ll chase and the things that don’t, people will try other experiments,” he said. What do you think of Kinect’s line-up so far? Does Ubisoft’s Gunsmith for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier impress?
