BioWare: Kinect an "additional platform"

Mass Effect 3 creator BioWare considers motion-sensing add-on Kinect to be a video game platform separate to the Xbox 360 used with a controller, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Mass Effect 3 supports Kinect through voice recognition – demonstrated on stage during Microsoft's E3 2011 press conference.

You're able to select lines of dialogue by saying them, and dish out commands to your team-mates.

"We view them almost as additional platforms," CEO Ray Muzyka told Eurogamer. "The Kinect plus 360, it's optional how you play it, but we view it as another platform for the game. 360 with the controller is another platform. PS3, PC and mouse. They need to all be seamless. They have to all be really thoughtful in terms of how we integrate them."

Last week publisher EA told Eurogamer Mass Effect 3's Kinect support was designed to help broaden the appeal of the science-fiction shooter franchise.

Going into more detail, Muzyka revealed how BioWare determined how it would use Microsoft's tech.

"We had to figure out a way to integrate the Kinect features into the game that felt natural and seamless, that added to the experience, that didn't feel gimmicky," Muzyka said.

"We wanted to find the right way to do that. Every game is different. If you have the right approach you can integrate different control mechanisms into different games. We just wanted to find the right one for Mass Effect 3.

"We found something pretty innovative. It's well differentiated from everything else there. The speech recognition we felt was the right way. You're Commander Shepard. You have a team. You can interact with them. You can talk to them. You can call out orders to them on the battlefield.

"If you want to focus on Commander Shepard and run up close and personal, do run and gun, pull out your Omni Blade and do melee right at the last minute, you can call orders to Liara and the rest of your squad on the fly and get them to take out other enemies on the way there. Or do it all through the controller."

Microsoft went big on Kinect at E3, announcing a number of new games that utilise the tech.