Let Talk Project Natal

[Bells]

E3 is now over, and compared to the last couple of years it was quite the great show.

Microsoft came in this year showing... well... not all that much (on exclusive new content) but it did came with the biggest talking piece of the show... Project Natal.

So, how does it look like for you guys?

I'll be honest... i see limitations, but i'm kinda excited about it. I still think that if Sony put's their Motion Controls cheaper ( Natal is $200 so far ) Microsoft will have trouble pushing the Hardware. But it all does really come down to Software.

Clear there will be tons of NXE content for the thing... but what abotu games? All we have seem are a bunch of promo videos and Tech demos (and we all know those are hardly trustworthy, for any company)

When i think about games with Natal, i think of Racing games, Football and Basketball. These all seem doable and probably fun to play. Sports and Racing games kinda come of easy with a setup like this.

Other games... not so much. At least, they seem hard to do... maybe something like an RTS or Board games... tons of "Family Games" too and probably Xbox Live Arcade. Any other type of game comes out "weird" to me on how it would work.

The voice recognition on the other hand... i just don't know what to make of that. I mean, since "Hey You Pikachu" and Seaman you KNOW of the limitations of said feature. But this one really feels gimmicky. It can work? Sure it can. But in Big games? With all the music and dialogue and Sound effects going around? I really doubt it...

So, what you guys think of it?

[Squall Leonhart]

I haven't heard how you input. Or rather, with what. All I see is this people playing in front of their TV, but no scanner, nor cables nor explanation whatsoever. However, it does look beautiful and I'm kinda looking forward to its release.

But! I know better than to expect this will change the world (http://www.cracked.com/article_17412_p2.html)!

[Regulus Tera]

I think this will become the new Duke Nukem Forever.

[Mike McC]

I think that, while right now Sony's will be better, that Project Natal opens up far more interesting possibilities for gaming in general. I'm hoping less Wiimote, more DS Stylus in terms of how efficeintly it's handled. There are very few impressive uses of the Wiimote so far, but the DS has some pretty impressive applications on it and they really get good use out of the interface.

Will it be vaporware? Very doubtful. They demoed quite a bit in the keynote, and they had working demos up and running for people to test out in the booth. It will take a year or two to get all the bugs worked out, but they do have quite a lot of legwork already done on it. This isn't some start-up making these promises; this is Microsoft.

[Azisien]

Hm, where to begin...

Microsoft came in this year showing... well... not all that much (on exclusive new content) but it did came with the biggest talking piece of the show... Project Natal.

I dunno, I saw lots of new content. Microsoft doesn't have a handheld, which is what the other two spent half their conferences droning on about (scribblenauts for the win by the way). Roughly the same amount of games shown as the other conferences, based on observation. And they had Natal and Milo, and while those are suspiciously ambitious (anything Molyneux works in is automatically stamped that in my books after Fable), they were the highlights of all three conferences to me.

So, how does it look like for you guys?

Pretty cool. As I've said one or two times before, I didn't buy an xbox 360 for motion sensing technology. I understand and implore Microsoft and Sony to try and nudge into Nintendo's market share, because duh, money. It's going to be hard convincing me to get it, cool as it is. Let's just say if it pans out as presented at the conferences, I'll be interested. However, I've learned time and again to not trust tech demos at all (I'm looking at you, FF7 tech demo :()

When i think about games with Natal, i think of Racing games, Football and Basketball. These all seem doable and probably fun to play. Sports and Racing games kinda come of easy with a setup like this.

Fighting games would be pretty rad with it, as well. Really, any game that can realistically incorporate motion sensing would probably perform on the Natal. What happens in practice is another story entirely and nobody's gonna know how that goes down until it goes down. Aside from perhaps the pressure sensors on a Wii Fit board, the Natal could take in more sensory information than the ~$180 CDN it takes to maximize immersion on the Wii (Mote + Chuk + MotePlus + Fit).

The voice recognition on the other hand... i just don't know what to make of that. I mean, since "Hey You Pikachu" and Seaman you KNOW of the limitations of said feature. But this one really feels gimmicky. It can work? Sure it can. But in Big games? With all the music and dialogue and Sound effects going around? I really doubt it...

You mean that Hey You Pikachu that they tried to do on a piece of hardware about as powerful as my TV remote, probably less powerful than the computers in my car. I think it's safe to say in 10 years, voice recognition may have progressed slightly, like everything else has. Also, I don't think the game's audio output is going to have a big impact on recognition, much like any decent gaming headset ever made hasn't had any trouble with it for the past 10 years.


Me? I'm applying for a bailout grant from the Canadian government to develop a snowball fight game for the Natal. :p

I think this will become the new Duke Nukem Forever.

I think it'd be more apt to worry about this becoming the new Microsoft-backed HD-DVD player.

[El Mullet]

I've got a good feeling that this technology is going to be put to some amazing use...in the next console generation. Right now, its a massive uphill battle for existing users to get such a massive set-up for possibly a few games, as well as new gamers who'll have to buy the system AND Natal separately. I have no doubt it's more advanced than the combination of EyeToy voice recognition games of the late '90s/early 00's, but its going to be better suited to the "next" next gen systems.

[Mike McC]

Yes, exatly. i see this as something that won't truely come to it's potential until the XBox 1080 or whatever it will be next.

[Azisien]

I will agree the talk of the 360 having a life cycle up to 2015 is just crazy. Maybe that's when they should, like, STOP support for it. But they better have a new piece of hardware out on the shelves within 2 years. I mean, my PC is already vastly superior to a 360, and even it will be slugging along behind compared to 2015 computers.

[Bells]

All i know is that Nintendo will be Rolling out a completely new Hardware around 2013 (or before that. Don't bet on after)

If Sony can come to their senses and Make a pack where you can get 2 of those wands and the Playstation eye by no more than $150, then i guess they can indeed push for quite sometime with the PS3 (having buttons and triggers and even an analog directly into their motion controller makes it superior to Natal for me). But the 360 could live for much longer if it didn't rely just on DVD's. You can only do so much with HDD Installs.

Buttons are something to think about Natal. How far can you go with none? But also... even the wii let's you play most of it's games sitting down or relaxed in a chair doing just certain motions. Natal can actually require you to get Physical. I'm sure there will be a lot of Party games and Fitness simulators for Natal... but how much are people willing to have all the games play like Wiifit?

You mean that Hey You Pikachu that they tried to do on a piece of hardware about as powerful as my TV remote, probably less powerful than the computers in my car. I think it's safe to say in 10 years, voice recognition may have progressed slightly, like everything else has. Also, I don't think the game's audio output is going to have a big impact on recognition, much like any decent gaming headset ever made hasn't had any trouble with it for the past 10 years.

I dunno, you're probably right... but i just don't see any big uses for the voice recognition that wouldn't clash with the development of the game itself. Can you imagine a WW2 shooter where you give voice commands for your squad? I can't. Those games usually have people shouting all around you all the time...

[Krylo]

I'll believe it can do half the stuff they're claiming it can do when I actually see a working product demonstration, and not one that was done with smoke and mirror and people behind the scene.

Even in the trailer they say right up front that product functionality may vary--which is to say it's probably not going to work nearly as well as they're hyping.

Think Wiimote version 1.0 meets the Eyetoy.

[bluestarultor]

I can't help but compare this to the Eye Toy. Seriously, motion capture isn't all that hard. We've had the technology in a gaming environment since at least the PS1 era, as I played with a contraption demonstrating it in the Arizona Science Museum in Phoenix as a kid. It was only 2D, but we really only have 2D vision, which our brains use other visual cues to interpret as 3D, anyway, which are incredibly well-known and can be put into a computer.

As for voice recognition, it's by no means perfect and you need to train it. How do I know this? Vista has it. It still sucks almost as hard as Hey You Pickachu. Again, the technology has been there for years, and it's nothing special.



Frankly, both technologies are old as dirt and neither of them are perfect. Computers are stupid. Unless you tell them in binary data exactly what to do, there will always be a margin of failure. This is the difference between typing and relying on handwriting recognition on a tablet. By hitting a key, you are sending a specific code signal that the computer doesn't have to guess at. By writing on the screen, you need to put it through software that reads the data, compares it to a base, and tries to make a guess without the benefit of human creativity or sensibilities. Computers can only work in absolutes, and some things are just in a gray area.