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E3 2011 | New Kinect Ideas to Benefit Disabled Gamers?

Written by Patrick Hancock

Published on 06 June 2011

kinect_sitting_banner

Microsoft showed a lot of new Kinect features during their E3 press conference today. In what may be a nod to things to come, they revealed that Mass Effect 3 would support the Kinect, the representative on stage was issuing voice commands instead of using normal button pushes. Whenever a dialogue wheel would pop up, he simply spoke the option he wanted Commander Shepard to say and Shepard continued with the conversation without missing a beat. They then went on to a combat sequence where the representative yelled out commands like "Garrus, move up" and sure enough, Garrus went forward.

kinect_sitting_splash These voice commands are directly replacing some of the button presses required in Mass Effect. This is already reducing the amount of controller dexterity needed to play the game which could prove to be a gigantic help to disabled gamers. We don't yet know if this is the extent of the Kinect controls in Mass Effect 3, but hopefully voice commands will be used for even more things, making the game on the Xbox much more accessible. Could we perhaps see Kinect games in the future that are entirely controlled by your voice? Assuming the voice recognition is strong enough I don't think that's too farfetched an idea, especially if Microsoft opens up the Kinect to the independent developers.

Another Kinect title revealed was Fable: The Journey. The opening scene met us with a normal person steering an old timey wagon when fate intervenes and he's brought together with some sort of magic using woman running from monsters. The gameplay then started and the representative on stage was essentially sitting down while whipping his arms up and down to command the horse pulling the wagon.

Could this be a Kinect game that allows gamers in wheelchairs to play with no problems? Our own Marco Pasqua showed us earlier this year that the Kinect recognized him while in a wheelchair, so this could be good news. The game looked like it was an on-rails shooter in the vein of the House of the Dead titles or Time Crisis, so there shouldn't be any manual moving around done by the player. Once the character got off of the wagon he was moving around while the representative on stage was waving his arms around in a lot of various motions in order to cast spells at the monsters.

Both of these Kinect features, when used correctly, could greatly help the disabled gamer community. There might even be an on-rails shooter that allows you to use only voice commands! While I'm not sure if that's on Microsoft's agenda any time soon it is certainly a possibility. We can only hope that both of these Kinect ideas start to permeate into other genres and games, leading to a more accessible gaming experience for everyone.

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0 #3 COMMENT_TITLE_R E E3 2011 | New Kinect Ideas to Benefit Disabled Gamers? — knight666 2011-06-08 07:27

I tried the kincet fun labs and it is not wheelchair useful

0 #2 COMMENT_TITLE_R E E3 2011 | New Kinect Ideas to Benefit Disabled Gamers? — Fobok 2011-06-06 17:36

I'm really glad to see more voice-controlle d stuff coming out of Kinect, that's one aspect that looked promising to me from the start.

I'd love to see a game that's totally voice controlled. Something like Endwar, but with higher quality. *That* would get me buying a Kinect, no question about it. I hate being limited to only playing games when my shoulder's in good enough shape to handle it.

0 #1 COMMENT_TITLE_R E E3 2011 | New Kinect Ideas to Benefit Disabled Gamers? — Mark 2011-06-06 04:50

I watched this event live, and I think that what I saw could be seen as a boon for disabled gamers. It is not a 100% fix, but it is a good push in the right direction.

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