EA: Kinect won't "screw" with FIFA

Kinect will not encroach upon the core FIFA football-match gameplay, EA Sports vice president Andrew Wilson has told Eurogamer

"The core FIFA gameplay is very, very strong based on the control mechanism we currently have," Wilson said.

"I'm not sure that we want to screw around with that if you will.

"What we're looking for," he added, "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."

FIFA 13 remains the target for Kinect's FIFA debut, Wilson re-confirmed. A Kinect team at EA Sports is experimenting with newly received developer kits and the results, Wilson said, were surprising.

"We have already seen abilities and opportunities and capabilities of that technology that we didn't think were there."

Andrew Wilson, vice president, EA Sports

"We're in pre-production right now. We have a core Kinect incubation group that's looking at various different capabilities of Kinect. We have already seen abilities and opportunities and capabilities of that technology we didn't think were there," Wilson said.

"Based on some of the new technology in the SDKs we're getting, there's some things we can do there that give a greater granularity of control and fidelity that we didn't know were there. That points to what I think could be a very promising opportunity for us.

"What we're seeing is: through optimisation that Microsoft has done, and that some of our engineers are doing, there is potentially some cool stuff that we can do."

Kinect headers and volleys? Kinect Wembley? Kinect wall-ball? Kinect goal celebrations? Kinect dives? Kinect four? Oh the possibilities.

Andrew Wilson's boss, Peter Moore, took to Microsoft's E3 stage to announce planned Kinect support for mega-franchises FIFA, Madden NFL and Tiger Woods PGA Tour. His pledge of Kinect allegiance was a surprise, given his trepidation months earlier.