April 12th 2012 7:30 am PT

Xbox 360 Kinect Support coming to Skyrim

Later this month, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be getting a free update that will include Kinect support. The Kinect integration will feature 200+ voice commands that can be used throughout the game. Watch the above video for more details or head over to www.elderscrolls.com

Kinect, Xbox 360 By Larry Hryb, Xbox LIVE's Major Nelson

permalink: http://majornelson.com/2012/04/12/xbox-360-kinect-support-coming-to-skyrim/

  • http://twitter.com/Sowee0 Gabriel Ayres

    This is simply awesome!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6FRXUHPJMEGKQQ765SCBEM2DPQ Brian

    Epic win here folks. Great news.

  • http://robert.aitchison.org raitchison

    OK this looks awesome, one of the more annoying things about Skyrim is how cumbersome it is to interact with followers (and the attitude of some of them)

  • http://twitter.com/boeboelord Boe2

    Apart from being able to crack the obvious “FUS..RO-DAH” voice command joke…what on earth would one gain from this? Who in his right mind said “hey, you know skyrim? We should slap kinect controls on it”?

    • Anonymous

      The voice recognition software is built into Kinect. For them to do it with a headset, Bethesda would have to create their own voice recognition software instead of being able to use the one Microsoft already developed.

      • Anonymous

        It may be built in to the Kinect SDK but its not built in to Kinect the hardware. 

        Kinect just does the processing from the microphone array in hardware, to try to ensure its sending ONLY your voice to the console, but the console does all the actual speech processing.

        So I would argue the same thing, why not the headset?  Although I suspect I know why, because the headset uses very lossy audio compression whereas Kinect I believe sends over lossless audio.  So it would have a much harder time trying to understand speech from the headset, heck I have a hard time understanding it a lot of the time myself.

        • Anonymous

          Hardware or SDK, it doesn’t matter.

          The point is, from the perspective of the developer, they can implement if fairly easily using Kinect because the tools they have (be it hardware or software tools) require very little additional work, whereas using a headset, they would need to do all of the work that’s already been done for them by Microsoft for Kinect voice recognition.

          So they opt to only support Kinect voice commands as a fun add-on instead of the HUGE undertaking that would be required to build in their own voice recognition system.

    • http://twitter.com/Navarin Rooftop Run

       EndWar tried that.

      It was awful.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_T7LOQAEEWPFE7UBMQGVCTNELQI huck

        binary domain too….
        it’s no better… but it seems to support both kinect and headset voice commands.
        the difference between the two is pretty huge.  the headset takes me 2 or 3 goes most times to get the right command.(no matter what accent i do)

  • Anonymous

    I used the Mass Effect function like this about five times in the demo, then never used it in the real game. 

    In other words…. this game is probably GOTY now!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • http://twitter.com/bushmaster2000 bushmaster2000

    I thought this was going to be cool in Mass Effect as well but having to repeat commands in the heat of battle put me at a disadvantage too many times so I went back to the ‘wheel’.  I’m all for trying it in Skyrim but if i have to repeat myself again and again, i’m done with it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/kurt.brock3 Kurt Brock

    Thoroughly enjoying Mass Effect 3 with Kinect and voice control. Adding this feature to future RPG’s will certainly enhance the overall experience. Now if they can only figure out how surrond sound speakers would stop interfering with Kinect during battle, that would be awesome.

    Now if they would only update Mass Effect 2 ….

  • Joe T

    MS – Please stop spending resources on Kinect and go back to being a hardcore games company instead!

    I am swaying further to the Sony darkside more as time goes on…

    • http://www.facebook.com/stu.andrew Stu Andrew

       The irony of using the words Hardcore Gaming and then talking about sony instead of pc

      • Joe T

        Yeah I play games on my PC already.

        What I should have said was that since Kinect came along, MS seem to have spent less time/money on exclusives whereas Sony have had many, most of which could be deemed ‘hardcore’ in nature…

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XOTBJKUR4IW74YLQH2LHQTE2BU Kairu

          I’ve been barking up this tree for a while now. MS doesn’t care, they wont spend money if they don’t have to, they’ll just rely on the people that buy shovelware Kinect games, DLC, and avatar clothes. That seems to be working for them. 

          It’s also obvious that MN doesn’t care either, as his job is to listen to the community, which he doesn’t do.

        • Anonymous

          Yeah games like fat princess and little big planet are really hardcore

    • http://twitter.com/HaloKitty343 DMH

      And it’s Bethesda, not MS implementing this.  

      Plus it’s fun.

      • Joe T

        True but I’m sure Bethesda had a few carrots (read: money) dangled in front of their noses to do implement it in the first place… They have no other reason to add this feature and I’m sure they didn’t do it just for the fun of it…

        • http://twitter.com/MondaySan Jack Cornell

          It’s funny you say that, they did actually do it for fun. Kinect Integration was shown in the Bethesda Game Jam, a little side project where they let the developers play around with the game and create whatever they wanted to with no boundaries. Some of the stuff shown in the game jam has already made it into the game, for example the new ranged killcams. There’s videos of the Game Jam floating around the web if you want to check it out.

    • Anonymous

      Go ahead. You’ll be back

  • http://twitter.com/Ganon255 Ganon255

    I like it

  • Anonymous

    Could people without a Kinect camera still get some type of quick save feature? You could press LB+RB or something like that. I really wish more console games would have it as a standard feature. 

  • aStrangeDisease

    Sweeeet! I’ll be playing some more Skyrim soon.

  • Anonymous

    It would be nicer if when you say the Shout, Dragonborn just DOES the shout instead of shouting again, anyone agree?

  • http://www.facebook.com/lMawds Lee Mawdsley

    You know what would be better?  Allow keyboard support and you can map every shout to a key.  Faster and cheaper…. but no, they don’t :|

    • http://twitter.com/DavidDDavidson5 David D Davidson

       Sounds incredibly fun, oh wait no it doesn’t…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=69211154 Jay Stokes

    Will the update work with just a xbox live mic? if not, WHY NOT?!?!

    • http://twitter.com/seekul Luke Es | sE ekuL

      Please read the comments from 12 hours ago. Short answer: voice recognition SDK only exists as part of Kinect. If the headset did a decent job easily, dozens and dozens of other games would have voice recognition already. And they don’t.

  • http://twitter.com/eepyaich Ed Harrison

    My eyes rolled when I saw the headline, but having watched the video I think this could be fantastic.  If it can just understand my accent when I say “Quicksave” then I’ll be happy – everything else (follower interaction, map navigation, trading support) will be a bonus.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=674106424 Devon Edwards

    Not needed.  And I second the comment by Lee Mawdsley: Give us keyboard support instead of motion control and Xbox suddenly becomes amazing again.

  • http://twitter.com/alexpacman92 alex

    Hi Nelson,

    I was recommended by a guy who works for Xbox to ask you about Gamertag issues? I want to change my Gamertag.

    I searched for the gamertag which i want to change it to, it says “this gamertag doesn’t exist” …i go to type in the gamertag change, and then it says “this gamertag is currently in use”.

    What’s the situation with this? Can you help at all mate?

    Regards,
    Alex

    • http://twitter.com/spivasound Spiva Sound

      That Gt can not be used. It was used in the past. Nothing we can do

  • Anonymous

    Great. Now if only Microsoft too could turn on english voice commands to the dashboard for everyone outside USA and England. Fucktards…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001125158981 Mikołaj Pękosz

    Yes, that’s pissing off, microsoft politics are terrible. I bought same consol as people in US/UK i bought same Skyrim game as people in US/UK and in Poland i dont have same options as people from these 2 countries ! Turn on voice commands at least in games to other countries or please, let people migrate theirs accounds again.

    • Anonymous

       It is on in games, at least for me in Forza 4, and I live in Sweden. And the english voice commands work flawlessly in Forza.
      It’s just on the dashboard it’s disabled. Don’t mind if it’s not in swedish, let me have the default english voice commands enabled at least.

      And the really funny thing is that if I disconnect my Xbox from Live and change my locale settings to USA the dashboard commands work. And it works perfect. But as soon as I connect to Live again and it sees that I live in Sweden… Nothing.

      And by the way, there’s plenty of americans, brits and whatnots living in other countries that can’t use the Kinect commands by the same retarded reasons (if there even are any reasons).

      So fuck Microsoft, and fuck ‘em right in the ear for their dishonesty. Voice commands was also one of the strong selling points in the commercials when they launched Kinect.

  • warlord_killer74

    Is there a voice command where you shout FUS RO DAH!!! at the screen?

  • http://www.facebook.com/victorsoaresc Victor Soares

    WTB support for Skyrim PC.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/W5RQU6YD4C45V6IXZPKO6BH2LE coolkid123

    ohhh my god becky look at her butt

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/W5RQU6YD4C45V6IXZPKO6BH2LE coolkid123

    toshie

  • http://profiles.google.com/dherman516 David Herman

    Dear God, why??? 

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