Why Natal Is a Big Deal 303
Kikizo has an editorial piece evaluating the Xbox 360's upcoming motion-control scheme, Project Natal, and discussing why it's a bigger step forward for interactive gaming than many people think. Quoting: "[Natal] accurately perceives players in 3D space, simultaneously tracking over 48 joints on your body, enabling it to accurately redraw your skeleton in real time as you move about. On a separate 'debug screen' in the closed-doors session, we could witness for ourselves the 'mind's eye' of Natal, visually showing how it completely understands where we are, how we're moving, where we are in 3D space, how far in front of my face my hand is, whatever. It can supposedly even track individual hand and finger movement when it switches into this more finely-tuned mode. ... There is a surprising feeling of tactility and iPhone-like fluidity and precision to the way Natal works." Another interesting bit of news about Natal is that Wii-hacker Johnny Chung Lee is part of the development team. We've discussed some of his creations in the past.
Another Reason It's Important (Score:5, Insightful)
I welcome this new technology but as an avid gamer I'm more than a little bit afraid that with this new technology everyone is going to be expected to take advantage of it on the XBox360. We might be jumping into a new dimension too fast for software and hardware to support it. I know a lot of people would argue with that statement but Wii games feel 'soft' when they are WiiMote intensive and I wonder if Project Natal will feel the same way. Don't get me wrong, they are great games for four people to play while getting loaded.
I guess Nintendo pioneered what is the next step in video games much like Sony pioneering the transition from directional pad to miniature joystick. My question now is really whether or not the PS3 will follow suit. They have to in order to attract these motion titles, don't they?
Excited about it but there are still problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Im really looking forward to Natal, I think its one step closer to total immersion, however its not without problems. A wand or some sort of controller is still going to be needed to effectively "walk" in a game the only other way to do it would be to use some sort of gesture to glide the player along or to walk in place, neither of which is very practical. Using a gesture to walk forward in an FPS or RPG for instance would not only be awkward but would also completely destroy the "immersion" they are going for and anyone who has played Final Fantasy would balk at the idea of having to "moonwalk" your way across the map.
I can easily see it working in conjunction with a controller for those types of situations though and would still make the game more fun. The gesture recognition has me thinking about Fable 3, especially with Lionhead already playing with the technology. Fable 3 used a gesture menu that caused NPC's to react differently and say different things based on the "mood" or jesture your character portrayed. Just thinking about being able to talk (even with a limited amount of things be able to say) to the npc's, or to be able to sneer, growl or smile and get a reaction sounds extremely fun. I still see this as being a rather long way off but its undeniable that its a leap forward.
I had the pleasure of playing with a Z-Cam at last years CES, Natal is supposedly based partially on that and partially on something MS has been developing for years, the Z-Cam was already impressive, if with the melding of technology this is actually an improvement its going to be something to behold.
iPhone-like fluidity, FFS (Score:5, Insightful)
"iPhone-like fluidity"
gimmie a break. How and why did you manage to fit a reference to the iphone into the summary.
Re:The Gamertag Report (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so much a big deal in and of itself... (Score:1, Insightful)
...but it's a great step towards touchless interfaces. I'm pretty sure we'll eventually have touchless interfaces based on gestural controls along with enhanced voice recognition technologies for our computers. It's the next logical step really. How close that is to reality, however, is a matter of debate. I don't think it's coming as soon as we'd expect, but I also believe that it's going to come about in our lifetime.
Re:"I can't wait to throw a fireball." (Score:4, Insightful)
So the Wii is also failing in those areas? It requires a similar amount of space to play Wii Sports.... maybe a small amount less, but not much.
iPhone-like subject line here (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree! It's bad enough trying to turn "iPhone" into a generic noun to replace the perfectly good word we already have: phone - now we get to use it as an adjective? (Although perhaps we should - if successful, Apple lose their trademark!)
I honestly can't even fathom what he means by it - although I suppose it's true that Natal doesn't have a keyboard, and probably doesn't have copy/paste...
Anyhow, now I'm off to iPhone-like read the rest of the ipHone-like Slashdot on my iPHone-like computer (it can access web pages, see! Although mine has a keyboard).
Re:What about people with disabillities? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is unfortunate that people with certain physical disabilities are being excluded from gaming by these new controller designs, but to suggest that game companies shouldn't innovate in this way lest some people be excluded by unfortunate circumstances sounds a lot like a Vonnegut short story to me.
The new Wii Fit (Score:5, Insightful)
I always see Natal being compared to MotionPlus and Sonys Motion sensing, but I think that isn't really correct. Both MotionPlus and Sonys solution feature more or less classic controllers, but with motion sensing added. Both of them also have heavy focus on wrist movement, while ignoring the rest of the body.
Natal on the other side features no controller at all, thus no buttons and analogsticks, making navigation through pretty much any normal game impossible or at least really cumbersome. On top of that Natal doesn't put emphasis on the wrist/hand, but on the whole body, so you lose a lot of the small movement precision that MotionPlus and Sonys solution have. So Natal really isn't an improvement over other motion sensing solution, as it can't do what those can.
So what is it? Pretty much the same thing as WiiFit or EyeToy, just in an improved form and those didn't exactly turn out as hardcore gamers best friends either. Natal will fail for the same reason. Positional information on where your arms and legs are just aren't enough for precise gameplay, you need buttons for that. Look for example at Ricochet, you have to punch the ball into the game instead of doing the more natural thing of throwing it. Why? Because there is nothing in Natal that could give the game a clear idea when the player let the virtual ball go.
Unless somebody comes up with some actual interesting gameconcepts instead of the full-body-waggle, that Ricochet is, I remain highly skeptical on the future of Natal. At this point it looks like an interesting techdemo, not like a way to control future games.
Natal might be the first step towards the next gaming revolution, but so was the Powerglove, that alone doesn't turn it into a useful peripheral.
Re:Wii ripoff (Score:3, Insightful)
Sony and Microsoft battled it out over pixel pushing, while Nintendo actually innovated (something Microsoft talks about a lot but never does) and built something new that people really liked -- something that actually got non-gamers onto the scene.
When Sony or Microsoft do what you praise Nintendo for, it's bad? Their technology is clearly innovative and different to the Wii.
The fact is they can have their high end processing power and graphics, and fun motion controls on top of that. They'll probably be better able to utilise them because of that power and make more fun games that wouldn't be possible with the Wii's hardware limitations. As someone interested in games, and not Sacred Nintendo's market share, it seems like a good thing to me.
[/Wii owner]
Re:Excited about it but there are still problems (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the thing I've wondered about the most.
As I've said in response to a previous article though, I feel even having a game like Gears of War controlled as normal but with the added ability to "physically" duck particles or move to cover would add a whole new level of immersion. Even if I had to walk and look with the controller I still see a lot of scope.
Of course, one solution would be just to provide a cut down controller like the Wii nunchuck. Again another thing I pointed out in a previous thread is that Natal doesn't preclude the use of extra controllers - Guitar Hero can still use Guitars but give you extra points and extra interactivity for rocking like a true rockstar as you play ;)
I think the best thing to take away from what Natal can do is that it adds a new dimension to interactivity, a dimension that can be used on it's own, or simply to enhance the experience of existing games. I think really it has to be taken in the context of what it can add to gaming, rather than the idea that it's a whole replacement or whole new way of doing things, but simultaneously that's not to say that it doesn't open doors for whole new styles of control as well.
Despite all that I do not expect us to see much from it this console generation, I do not believe it will be released and then have time to really flourish until the next console generation, i.e. I think it'll be 2 years before we really see Natal come into it's own.
Precision? Did you actually see the demo? (Score:2, Insightful)
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&safe=off&q=microsoft%20e3&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv# [google.com]
Seriously, has anyone actually paid attention to the stage demo?
Take a look at the first bit with Ridiculous Sunglasses Guy and his avatar - he makes little, uncomplicated poses and the avatar twists itself into pretzels.
It's _extremely_ glitchy.
Then they change to the girl playing ricochet, which is something like 500+ ms lagged and it seems clearly impossible to control with any kind of precision. The lag indicates to me that they are using a tremendous amount of smoothing to try and avoid some serious jitter problems.
It looks like it will fall as short of their glitzy marketing video promise as the wii controller did.
Any game that is not frustrating to control with this technology will basically be playing itself with small cues from you.
I think it's great that there is work being done in these areas, but I am just astounded that so many people are so readily regurgitating the marketing promises for this technology, when they can even demonstrate it halfway convincingly under completely controlled conditions.
Remember PDC2003 (Score:5, Insightful)
By watching:
- all that "movie magic" (as one put it) in the non-live demos
- the highly choreographed demos given on stage
- Microsoft saying this is a very early in development
- Microsoft saying there is no shipping date
- the Milo video suggests a very capable AI far beyond what we could expect today, with reactions to facial expressions and broad-domain speech recognition
- how Vista looked great in that early video when it was called Longhorn and what a dog it is.
I call it bullshit.
This is Microsoft showing a non-product in order to damage sales of its competitors who are selling obviously less-advanced technology (of course - because they can ship a real product right now) than the fantasies they depict in their promotional videos.
Wake me up when they have a product.
Peter Molyneux... (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't trust anything associated with Peter Molyneux anymore. The man has over-hyped some of his games as a mighty revolution in gaming; the released product then falls far short(Black and White, Fable). This article is just a part of that hype machine rolling on.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'll believe this when I see it.
Re:Another Reason It's Important (Score:3, Insightful)
Nintendo pioneered the miniature joystick as well. The n64 had analog sticks more than a year before the dual shock debuted. Nintendo always innovates, while everyone else takes.
I wish Nintendo also "pioneered" some new games... Motion controls are great, but useless if there are no new games to take advantage of them. WiiSports seems to be more of an exception.
The only thing which "excites" me about Natal is that MS is known for pushing hard technology on developers. In other words once released, I expect better support for Natal on Xbox360 than that of WiiMote on Wii.
Though there is also a probability that (similarly to WiiMote) Natal would degrade into some sort of "Waggle HD", when you need to waggle your limbs to trigger some action in a game. At least with WiiMote one waggles only with hands.
Re:"I can't wait to throw a fireball." (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, I'm having flashbacks to when the first Xbox came out and people were saying it was doomed in Japan because its case was too big. As is the extra inch on the Xbox was just enough so it wouldn't fit through the door, or some shit. (Given, the original Xbox didn't do well in Japan, but I don't think it's physical size had anything to do with it.)
Now you're telling me that in the UK apartments (flats) are so small, apparently, that people with 36" TVs have to sit no more than 2' from the screen? Yeah, right. I know bullshit when I smell it.
The simple fact is that anybody who has a decent-sized TV in a comfortable-to-view location has enough space to use Natal. (Or Wii, or Sony's Eyetoy, since your argument applies equally to those.)
Re:Precision? Did you actually see the demo? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the power of Microsoft's marketing department.
Like no other company in the world, they have the ability to stop the presses and get ever news organization on the planet to talk about their products. CNN? New York Times? Sure, even if it's obscure gaming technology. Tech sites? Obviously. Linux news? Anti-MS sites? Slashdot? They're first in line.
I don't know what they pay the marketing guys over there, but they deserve a raise.