EA have revealed how Kinect will be integrated into Need For Speed Most Wanted.
“Need a boost of nitrous? Or maybe add some strength to your chassis? Just say it! Instead of going through the EasyDrive scrolling through endless menu to add mods, in Most Wanted you can just say what you want,” says the overly excited post on the Need For Speed website.
Apparently you can say “Mods, Nitrous, Burn Nitrous” and your vehicle will instantly be equipped with nitrous boost – I wonder if that shout will work in Skyrim?
“Kinect is an awesome feature to use when you just can’t be bothered to stop driving,” says the site.
Source: NeedForSpeed.com
Alex C
How about I just press a button instead?
Dr_mohannad
I was thinking the same thing, it’s easier to hit the directional button than say the words and waiting, unless there’s some sort of a long menu to get there.
baggyg
So basically kinect has turned into a microphone. Umm didnt we already have a headset peripheral that does that?
freezebug2
Not all avenues were explored during the preliminary ideas stage I’d presume, mic’s were overlooked. The things they’ll do when grasping at straws. :P
JesseDeya
Basically, yes.
What Kinect seems to have offered devs is a standard, built-in speech recognition library that’s (presumably) easy to crowbar into their game(s).
Ironically, Microsoft (or Sony for that matter) could have done this _without_ any form of hardware peripheral as all the processing is done off board by the console – Kinect is literally just the microphone (or 4).
It is slightly damning for Kinect that voice recog is all most devs will bother touching.
TSBonyman
So they still can’t get the ‘slide foot to brake’ working? ;)
Forrest_01
That sounds bloody awful.
I really don’t see the merit in kinect integration in a driving game. I see its merits in many other things, but in driving games it just feels forced for the sake of it.
In relation to this, if i am playing a game then & get annoyed & happen to shout “bloody hell” at the telly, does the screen now change to reflect this? Am i gonna see satan sitting around in his pants lethargically torturing some lost souls?
Zoddi
If it doesn’t work with shout you have Tears for Fears….
wirralsman
And i assume it will happen instantly instead of taking you to the page where it gets done, via a lengthy loading screen?
MICKY17
‘Shout, shout, let it all out, these are the things I can do without’
Somehow these lyrics sum up how I feel about this pretty pointless feature.
stage1
This better work for a normal mic on PS3 as well.
This can be done easily WITHOUT the use of Kinect. All you need is a crappy mic.
Forrest_01
Oh god i hope not – I really don’t want to see crappy gimmicks like this bleed onto PS3 just because someone thought it would be a good use of kinect!
yiddo
Wow, Kinect has become a bit of a joke. It literally is just a headset now. Incredible.
JesseDeya
Yes it could work on PS3, but as I mentioned above what Kinect has brought to the Xbox is a MS funded speech recognition library that devs can tap into with very little effort and at practically no cost. They probably also get more exposure from Microsoft by including ‘Kinect’ features (no matter how token) so the incentive to shoe-horn in uselessness continues.
For this to work on PS3 (as it has been successfully implemented in various games in the past) the devs have to write or licence their own speech recognition tools. For the most part this is too cost prohibitive to justify a gimmicky use of voice like NFS is doing.
I would love to see the PS3 use voice in more games (like Madden for instance), but unless Sony make it easy (and free) for devs I can’t see them doing it.
hazelam
it is free on PS3, they don’t want it free though, they want somebody else to do it for them.