Is there an actual technological reason why the voice commands couldn't have been done over a standard mic? Or is it just a gimmick in order to make the Kinect appeal to "hardcore gamers"? I remember Tom Clancy's Endwar using voice commands over the regular mic.

Because the Kinect handles the actual voice recognition, not the game. Mass Effect itself doesn't have the recognition software, that runs through the Kinect.

Plenty of games have used voice commands over headsets before, I don't see why Mass Effect would be any different.

No, there is no reason other than Microsoft money.

It's a silly gimmick for the masses, so funny to see all those 'celebs' be super excited in that video.
Poor sods have no clue.

does anyone know if voice funtionality works on the pc version? just with a normal mic of course

@gjedwards: I doubt it as then it would defeat the branding of "Better with Kinect."

@Brodehouse said:

Because the Kinect handles the actual voice recognition, not the game. Mass Effect itself doesn't have the recognition software, that runs through the Kinect.

This, Casey Hudson said it himself in an interview. I don't know about its credibility though.

@gjedwards said:

does anyone know if voice funtionality works on the pc version? just with a normal mic of course

I doubt that, I assume they want to make that feature a Kinect exclusive.

@Brodehouse said:

Because the Kinect handles the actual voice recognition, not the game. Mass Effect itself doesn't have the recognition software, that runs through the Kinect.

This is correct, without Kinect Mass Effect 3 would have to have actual built-in software for voice recognition, the PC version could easily have built-in voice recognition - though that would require some extra work for the platform many developers and publishers see as the least profitable.