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Skyrim/Kinect support coming soon, Turns the Kinect into a $150 Microphone.

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Thursday, April 12, 2012

As it was alread mentioned in this article, Skyrim is getting some very exciting new features which should help streamline some interface commands such as: switching your own weapons, equipping spells, using dragon shouts and ordering your companion to trade/attack/wait - but only for Xbox 360 users who have Kinect. 

I would like to admit up front that I'm not the most tech savy gamer in the world, so I may not know what I'm talking about, but I don't think expanding voice support from the Kinect to any microphone would be terribly difficult for developers if they already wrote software that recognizes voice commands, right? At the moment these voice commands, which sound like great addition to all versions of Skyrim, are going to be exclusive for Xbox 360 users, similar to the way that voice commands for squadmates in Mass Effect 3 worked.

Wouldn't you like voice commands in your version of Skyrim or ME3 without having to shell out $150 for the Kinect?

 

 
Tags: Mass Effect 3, Kinect, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
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Spencer Gregory
April 12, 2012

My only thought on why it's Kinect only  is that they might be using substantial proprietary software and libraries from Microsoft while developing Skyrim. Those resources are likely written specifically for Kinect input. In that case, other microphone inputs would require a lot of code rewriting.

disclaimer: I know very little about game development. That's all just a guess. Maybe they were given extra in their contract for making the new features Kinect only. After all, this is meant to drive the sales of Kinect within the hardcore audience.

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Shawn Kranitz
April 12, 2012

It probably is meant to help drive Kinect sales, and it's likely that Microsoft paid them to do so (just speculation), but it's still kind of disheartening as a hardcore gamer, when features for a game are locked to a specific system just to drive sales for a product that nobody seems to want.

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Dan "Shoe" Hsu
May 24, 2012

Hey Shawn, just stopping by to say thank you for catching/reporting that spam. :)

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Shawn Kranitz
May 25, 2012

Thank you =]
I saw it and realized I couldn't let them poison my favorite website =]

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