We knew it was coming and now we know when. But we still don’t know how. Chatting to Eurogamer, EA Sports vice president Andrew Wilson has confirmed that FIFA13 is when we will see Kinect support make its way into the franchise.
“The core FIFA gameplay is very, very strong based on the control mechanism we currently have, I’m not sure that we want to screw around with that if you will.”
You use a controller, same as any other game. It’s been working for a while now. But Andrew is well aware of that...
“What we’re looking for, is how can a Kinect experience be additive to that without de-focusing or de-prioritising that core 11 on 11 twitch gameplay that happens on the pitch which, to be frank, the controller does a very good job of facilitating.”
Controllers do indeed do a very good job of facilitating it because they were designed to control games like FIFA. Kinect was not.
PR guff aside, somewhere, surely there must be practical applications for Kinect in FIFA? Here are a few ideas I’ve seen thrown about.
Custom Celebrations:
An interesting, probably quite fun addition on the surface. Actually doing the robot when you bury a 90th minute winner would be funny, but if you’re in the room with the person you’re playing against then it’s pointless because you can do that without Kinect. To make it worthwhile, you’d need to have a window that pops up in online matches which showed your opponent celebrating. It would be awesome to be able to properly celebrate when scoring and have the other player watch, but it’ll never happen because people can’t be trusted to not get their knobs out.
Once you restrict the idea to offline usage (or online but only as a way to initiate an in game celebration), it would tire very quickly. If you honestly think about it, would you still be using that feature after a week or so? I wouldn’t. And surely the list of celebrations would be slim? Can’t see many of us managing Nani backflips in our living rooms.
Game Face:
If properly applied it would allow people who don’t have/want an EASF account or don’t want to mince around with getting unity running smoothly, to get their face into the game. Definitely useful.
Taking Throw Ins:
A slim possibility, mainly because the novelty would wear off almost immediately. It wouldn’t be as accurate as using a pad and would be frustrating if it didn’t work 100% of the time. The possibility of the controller slipping out of your hand and slamming into the TV is just too great. It might be hilarious the first time you did it, but it would offer nothing at all to the game.
Actually Controlling The Game:
See “Taking Throw Ins”.
Playing As A Keeper:
In the arena this would possibly be fun, but it wouldn’t be a good idea for matches. There’s too much room for error. Can you imagine one of the FVPA keepers conceding a goal because of Kinect lag? Me either.
Minigames:
As with playing as a keeper this might be a laugh, but if that’s what you’re looking for, you can get Kinect Sports right now without waiting until 2012.
Menu Navigation:
FIFA has suffered from a sluggish, poorly designed menu system for a while. They’ve been redesigned and are now a lot better, so do people actually want to be waving their arms about to swap players or change match settings? I can’t see it being a positive addition. However…
Voice Support:
This is where things get interesting. The possibilities are great and as I noted when I reviewed UFC Personal trainer for NGB voice support can be a fantastic addition to a title if applied properly. Within FIFA, voice commands could be used to swap tactics and formations mid match, or set players on runs with more variety than the current control system allows.
The thing is, there can’t be anything introduced that would hold any sort of “advantage” for Kinect owners. So anything introduced will have to be replicated in some way for players who don’t have Kinect, surely. Which in turn means that any new features added have to be throw away and not anchored to the core experience.
So what do you guys think? Will Kinect support bring anything exciting to the franchise or not?
