Playstation Gamer UK

The big talk coming out of this year’s E3 is, sadly, not a game, or even a piece of hardware. It’s a peripheral coming from a company that Microsoft bought. Yes, I’m talking about the far off Project Natal. Now, I know this is a PlayStation website, and as such I like to stick to PlayStation things but certain fanboys just won’t let me forget this “game changing” technology so I’m going to tell you why I’m not simply blown away by the ability to sit on my couch and hold my hands up like I’m driving a car while my father drills things, or pick dresses from Xbox’s library, which I’m sure is very impressive.

Alright, the first reason is that I’m skeptical about this. I’m apparently the only one who remembers that E3 is known more for broken promises than landmark announcements. A lot of the press reaction coming out of E3 is that it works, and that’s possible, but a lot of demos work great while the game doesn’t work nearly as well, so it’s quite possible that this could be the case here. I’ll be honest, a lot of this stuff is new, I’m hesitant to say “revolutionary” or “game changing” and I’ll tell you why later. But it’s definitely new. I’ll give you examples, the scanning part. Where the kid holds up his skateboard and the camera scans it into a new game. This cool, apparently the camera can see right through your hand. Honestly, the only thing I see from that demo that I believe will work the way they say it will was the facial recognition software. This isn’t really revolutionary to me, a lot of things have it, this just scans it from a video instead of a picture.

Next we have desire. This is nice but I don’t see the games application here. Do you, as gamers, really want to do that? When I play a racing game I want a controller in my hand. I don’t want to fight by fighting. How are you going to play Gears or Halo using motion controls? There are certain things here but I don’t see it spreading past something like possibly Milo. But a recent article brought even the legitimacy of that into doubt. I haven’t used it so I can’t really comment but this is nothing more than a tech demo. Once it’s out in retail then I’ll judge it.

We also have time and price. The rumour currently floating about the internet is that the price of this camera is around $400. Yes, Microsoft has been bashing Sony about the price of it’s console since it’s launch so they respond by releasing a peripheral that costs just as much (add in another $299 if you don’t own an Xbox 360). Then there’s the release date, there is none. But, if I was making an estimate I’d say between 2 to 3 years from now.

It’s conceivable that the price of the camera will drop down some by the time it releases but it’s also conceivable that the other consoles will have their own Natals. Yes, this tech is patented so Sony or Nintendo can’t simply copy it but if you think that there is no other way to do this than you are just kidding yourself. I mean a lot of the things that were demoed as “revolutionary” such as recognizing drawings can already be done with the PS Eye.

I’ve been talking to some Xbox gamers about this, and with the exception of one, they’re not really thrilled by it. This is made to appeal to “casual” gamers and I’m not even sure it can do that. There is no way this camera is going to be cheap.

Right, so I think this isn’t “game changing” or “revolutionary” software because I don’t think it’s going to be used in many games. Developers like Bungie or Epic or Kojima Productions (since people think they’re in Microsoft’s pocket now) aren’t going to want to develop a game that uses a motion control. Yes, Peter Molyneux is going to try to develop Milo for it. But I don’t think many others will.

So there you have it, because I’m skeptical about whether or not it will deliver, because I think it’ll cost an arm and a leg, and because it doesn’t have many real games application, I’m not thrilled about this. If you want to flick through the Xbox’s UI and are willing to spend $600 on it, congratulations, there’s a new motion camera for you. If you want something that’s applicable to games, then you’re probably with me on this. Oh, that’s cool, but I don’t want it.

This entry was posted on June 6, 2009 at 5:42 pm and is filed under Playstation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.