Kinect and Move implementation was not a distraction for FIFA 13 devs

One of the new elements in FIFA this year is the inclusion of Kinect and Move. But is this really what FIFA needs? Or are these just introductions to please the platforms holders?

It could have been a distraction, but we as a team always endeavor to ensure that what we’re putting into the game isn’t gimmicky,” FIFA 13 producer David Rutter told MCV.

Rather than come up with a bunch of mini games to tick the ‘better with Kinect’ box – where you kick your legs or dive around, which wouldn’t improve the overall experience – what we did was look at what’s frustrating for users and what could we do differently, and then match that to the strengths of those control systems were.

For Kinect, it’s the voice control. If you look at some of frustrations in our game around tactical changes and the pause menu, being able to utilise voice controls that enable our fans to quickly and seamlessly make useful changes without having to pause the game is very much a benefit.

For Move, it’s slightly different. What we wanted to do was to take an extremely accessible controller and come up with a control scheme that allowed us to use that really well. We were lucky enough a few years ago to implement a pretty successful mouse control system on our PC game and I thought that would be a really appropriate place to start with the Move.

What we’ve actually created is two very different control schemes that utilise the strengths of those two control systems.”