Bandai Namco Entertainment is one the largest (third, behind Sony and Nintendo but ahead of Sega) and most renowned gaming companies in Japan. It has created globally adored titles such as Pac-Man, Tekken, or Ace Combat, among many others. But they didn’t have the chance to work on something for the real world too often. No worries, because Nissan just asked them to lend a helping hand.
Apparently, the Japanese automaker has decided to tackle the tricky issue of vehicle-to-human communication through various warnings that usually make up a concert of annoying pings, beeps, and all kind of other sounds—a.k.a. the vehicle’s usual array of chimes.
And it’s a good thing they want to change the sound design, because frankly, in the before and after section (kicking off at the 1:57 mark following the general presentation), we immediately concluded that Nissan’s current soundtrack of warning chimes is a very annoying one.
Notice how everyone in this video (embedded below), including Hiroyuki Suzuki (yes, his name is Suzuki, and he works for Nissan), the company’s lead engineer for in-car information sound design, speaks in a very soft manner? It’s probably because they went numb after listening all day to those horrible chimes.
Joking aside, and after we enabled the closed caption option for English subtitles, it was quite clear the Pac-Man creators and the company that blew the whistle on the bad practices of its former CEO have some very serious business to attend to.
As such, with help from Bandai Namco, Nissan has created an entirely new series of warning chimes for some of its vehicles—present in the video are the all-new Note, Qashqai, as well as the X-Trail/Rogue.
It’s also important to note that it’s widely expected for the Qashqai to morph into the 2022 Rogue Sport as soon as possible, so it’s entirely plausible to imagine that new owners of the future U.S.-specification crossover SUV will have a much better experience when referring to the warning soundtrack...
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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