Nissan Engages Video Game Giant Bandai Namco To Create In-Car Warning Sounds
Video screenshot via Nissan Europe
Cars are a mainstay in some of the most popular video games, but Nissan flips the script by incorporating video-game elements in vehicles. The Japanese automobile company’s sound engineers have teamed up with Bandai Namco Group—maker of Pac-Man, Tekken, Tamagotchi and Gundam—to design in-car sounds for its newer models.
Debuting in the 2021 Nissan Rogue and Pathfinder in the US, the Nissan Note in Japan, and the Nissan Qashqai in Europe, the sounds will be Nissan’s brand “voice” and give the cars personality and character. And while warning noises can be rather jarring, the new informational sounds are less distracting, and more musical, while serving as intuitive prompts.
“We wanted to make it easier to understand the information in the car and provide an emotional tone so that people feel the Nissan brand,” explained Hiroyuki Suzuki, lead engineer for in-car information sound design at Nissan, in a press release. “In game development, Bandai Namco’s sound creators develop sounds that simulate players’ intuitive understanding. We… can help drivers have a similar intuitive understanding, in addition to creating sounds that will become synonymous with Nissan global models.”
Minamo Takashi, sound director at Bandai Namco Research Inc, noted that video games have two types of sounds: “one creates the world view of the story and expresses how it develops; the other is functional and absolutely vital for playing the game because they give you feedback or warn you of danger.”
In a similar vein, vehicle cabin alerts should be informative and suitably trigger feedback during critical moments; as such, the resulting sounds were adjusted accordingly to meet “the urgency and seriousness of the information.”
The group encountered one major setback during the design process. It turns out that Bandai Namco’s multi-layered tones wouldn’t translate as well in Nissan’s monotone devices, so Nissan designed whole new speakers to accommodate them.
It was a rewarding experience for Takahashi, who reflected: “When I got in a car and listened to the sound coming out, I felt the same way I felt when first playing a game I worked on. Even if the industry is different, that sense of accomplishment when you reach your goal is the same.”
[via Kottke and Nissan Stories, video and cover image via Nissan Europe]
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