Mass Effect 3 - Kinect Will Widen Audience

I'm not going to comment on VR for dialogs, it has already been said.

Combat VC however, is not something new. Many games utilized this feature years ago. Tom Clancy's Endwar had it, relied on it and was backed with an advertising campaign which emphasized on it. Even back in 2004 UT2004 had VR companion control mechanics that work pretty much the same way ME3 is supposed to do in 2012. Did they succeed at attracting the casual audience?

EA games said:

Mass Effect has a fairly complicated combat system. You've got story and choice. For some fans that don't buy 12 games a year and maybe buy two or three, some of those things can be intimidating.

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Nobody's buying 12 rpgs a year and becoming a master of any supposed rpg complexity because only two or three new rpgs are being released per year to begin with.

In fact the very reason companies like Bioware and Bethesda have yet to suffer significant loss of sales from all this fattening of their audiences is that the core audience, the rpg addicts, haven't had many alternatives on where to sate their year-long rpg craving despite the roleplaying quality of these games getting more diluted with each sequel.

It won't last forever, the idea of TW2 killing DA2 is already prevalent in mainstream media. As soon as they can no longer take us for granted their games will improve.

JemyM said:

"Oh, this is a Kinect game. Mass Effect 3 huh? Sounds great!"

Somehow I do not see it. ME3 players are the people who played ME1 and ME2. If one of them just happen to have a Kinect too they might use it.

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Exactly. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: ME3 is not the right place to look for a bigger audience. A Mass Effect spin off is the right place for that sort of thing.

KapitanUnterhosen said:

Nobody's buying 12 rpgs a year and becoming a master of any supposed rpg complexity because only two or three new rpgs are being released per year to begin with.

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He's referring to those casual gamers who buy the same 3 games every year. CoD, FIFA and NHL most likely. The funny thing is, some of those games have more stats than recent Bioware offerings.

Also, I wonder if he's realized the logic hole in his argument. How can you market ALL your games to people who buy the same 2-3 games every year?

TheSisko said:

He's referring to those casual gamers who buy the same 3 games every year. CoD, FIFA and NHL most likely. The funny thing is, some of those games have more stats than recent Bioware offerings.

Also, I wonder if he's realized the logic hole in his argument. How can you market ALL your games to people who buy the same 2-3 games every year?

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Last I heard one of those speak about rpgs he spoke about "those" games. Its nothing new. It has always been totally pointless to even bring the subject to them. I know too many such gamers.

All they play 24/7 all year long is NHL. Thats after they watch the latest NHL match from TV and finish latest discussions about NHL. Its all very..boring. Somtimes they are even worse than som of my rpgs friends who have endless discussions i.e about what is realistic in middle-earth. I cant stand those discussions.

So is this what they were talking about when they said they were pushing back the release to "improve the experience" or whatever the reason given was?

All they seem to be doing is pushing down the price I'll eventually be willing to pay for this if and when I buy it.

TheSisko said:

He's referring to those casual gamers who buy the same 3 games every year. CoD, FIFA and NHL most likely.

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Good one. Other titles from EA have the elements he mentioned as intimitading.

FIFA has choice (and consequence), story mode and a football system that can be told to be fairly complex.

EA games wont sell under the constraint crafted by this guy.

"widen"? That brings abominable thoughts to mind....