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Rainbird on 18 January 2012
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Reasonable said:
Rainbird said:
Panama said:
Ajescent said:
I'm still calling Bullshit on this, on the grounds that headsets exists!

Also this is a good point, I fail to see why the standard 360 headset does not have this functionality.

Kinect contains hardware that aids voice command interpretation. If it was to be done through a headset, the developer would have to invest a lot more in creating solid voice recognition, than is required with Kinect.

No they wouldn't actually.  Kinect does have a design to aid identification and seperation of voice from background sounds amongst other things, but if you're wearing a headset with a mike (as I do sometimes when gaming on my PC) you don't need that as you're speaking into the mike directly.  From there it's simple voice recognition that's been around (and used) for ages.

Kinect adds ability to better support this for a gamer sitting on a couch some distance from the screen, but there is zero reason I can see the PC version couldn't have the same thing via a headset (apart from the fact the developer would no doubt have to use two sets of recognition libraries - the one's with Kinect and the one's for PC).

I think it's an interesting use of the voice stuff but like most Kinect hybrid elements I don't see it necessarily being better than other methods of control - but hopefully this will be one of the small steps to actually get us somewhere interesting.

EDIT: TBH what's shown in the video could easily be supported by Eyetoy too.  Kinect would definately have better range and seperation of voice but in the case of a gamer sitting directly (or near enough) in front of the sceen as shown there seems no reason (other than integration to multiple sets of voice recognition libraries) that all 3 versions couldn't have optional voice control (and given not every 360 owner has Kinect that's all it is on 360 too).  Mind you at least MS are pushing this - I presume they've worked with the developer and perhaps even funded this element of the game - whereas Sony are still in the mode off tossing out the hardware and software libraries and waiting for developers to use it.

Given the BioWare quote, it seems to me like Kinect contains hardware that aids actual data processing and not just seperating a voice from the background noise.

The problem is that we don't really know what's available to developers here. Maybe Microsoft have created libraries that BioWare are using or maybe it's an API call to the hardware. Knowing how easy it would be to create the same functionality at a high enough level of quality and a low enough cost on other platforms is tricky.