Aside: Natal.

Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 2:00 pm in Asides · Comments

I’m not usually one to link to stories that crop up in my feed reader, but I’m guessing many of you have reservations, like myself, regarding Project Natal. I’m not massively stoked on the idea of it. Not because of the technology itself, although the E3 demo initially had me thinking it seemed too ambitious, but more so about it changing the way we play video games entirely. Then I read this article, which had a quote from Jon Burton, the Traveller’s Tales Director. Burton said “[the controller is] exceedingly clever, but the lag on the input and lack of physical buttons is really going to restrict the kind of games that can be done with it.”. This has eased my mind in a big way.

Playing a triple A shooter with nothing but my body as the controller isn’t something that gets me excited. At all. And I was worried that this was where the future of video games was indefinitely headed. Who knows, it possibly could be, but I have a temporary ease of mind knowing that this may not be possible any time soon. Call me a lazy gamer, or call me too stubborn to embrace the changes Natal may bring about, but I’m suddenly feeling very at ease with the motion control phenomenon. How about you?

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6 Responses to “Aside: Natal.”

Steve

# January 15th, 2010 at 3:45 pm

Like you I was quite concerned at the direction games would be heading. Will developers jump on the band wagon and start trying to introduce Natal features, just because of the hype? Thinking about it many games just are not suited to it.

A shooter surely is not the type of game to be able to funtion with this technology? There are normally far too many controls to be able to function with motion control. Hop on your left foot to reload?!

The technology sounds great and I’m sure there will be some great games developed for it. The possibilities are huge and I’m sure it will be aimed more towards the casual gamer and family market.

For the meantime the games I love will probably stick to the trusty controller and I can stay planted on the sofa without wheezing around the living room.

Oh and yes I probably will buy it because I’m far too curious about it all!

Aaron B. Russell

# January 15th, 2010 at 7:45 pm

For me, games are a way of experiencing things I’m no good at in real life.

If I start having to be good at these things in real life just to play them, that kinda takes the fun away.

I’m intrigued by Natal, and will almost certainly be picking it up when it launches, but I’m also glad that it’s a “new area of gaming”, rather than a “this is how all gaming will be” type of thing.

Rockers Delight

# January 15th, 2010 at 7:53 pm

@Steve That is exactly what happened with Nintendo Wii. Developers were surprised at the success of it and therefore jumped on the bandwagon of porting games to the Wii, not giving any real thought as to how to enhance the experience with motion control, but instead jamming it full of half assed motion sensing shite. Fortunately it seems to have calmed down now, but my fear would be that the same would happen to Natal.

@Aaron You and me both. I’m definitely cool with it being a new area of gaming as opposed to the definition of future gaming. As long as it’s used only when needed.

Rhiannon Floyd

# January 16th, 2010 at 2:38 am

I’m actually looking forward to it, mostly for party gaming. I’m 110% sure it will never replace controller-based games, and never quite understood how/why a lot of people thought it would. Instead, I think it’s Microsoft’s way to compete directly with the Wii. And, to me, that makes perfect sense, especially from a business standpoint. There’s a lot of money in the casual games market, after all.

Arnold Sideways

# January 17th, 2010 at 5:54 pm

As I work on Project Natal I can’t really say much about it, other than that I don’t think there’s any danger of it replacing regular games, only existing as well as them. I also don’t think there’s any value to trying to jam Natal functionality into games where it isn’t needed. Game design with Natal requires the designer to start from scratch, and design something for Natal, rather than take an existing style of game and try and bend it to work with motion control. I think Natal, like the Wii, is mainly targeting the group of people who don’t normally play games. Still, there’s millions of people who love their hardcore games and publishers would be pretty stupid to ditch those customers entirely, when they’re the reliable source of income that keeps the industry going, in favour of the more impulsive driven casual market.

Christoffer Radsby

# January 18th, 2010 at 9:53 am

Even though motion-controllers are great I really like standard issue control methods the best. If you can mix technology like Natal and button controls I’ll be happy. If they manage to create a decent boxing game using Natal I’d definitely would give it a go.

I don’t really like how they used the six-axis for things either, like turning valve-levers or balancing like in Uncharted. It’s such a hassle sometimes, and I hope they intend to do things right from the start unlike the Nintendo Wii, when you have to buy accessories to get the controller to its full potential.

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