Thursday, June 11, 2009

Natal Should stay in the Womb.

Call me a cynic. Call me a fanboy. Call me a jerkass. Call me something creative.

No matter how people choose to view what I'm about to say, I stand by it with iron resolve.

Natal is unimpressive. It is gaming's version of Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars'. They both sound cool, revolutionary and advanced, there is no arguing that. However, Natal and Laser Missile Defense have something else in common beyond fun buzzwords, that thing is that they will both never really get past the planning stage. (Laser Missile Defense died a terrible death along with the Cold War.)

People are confusing "a new way to play" with "it recongizes your voice". As best I can tell, that is ALL that this goddamn camera/mic does. Well, that's not fair to say, it does track movement. However, the ball kicking/handling demo only showed me that it is the same as strapping wiimotes to your feet.

More than anything, all the things that Natal claims to do are uninteresting to me. An article on a gaming site suggested that it'd be cool to raise your arm while playing Fallout 3. Sure that's fun in theory, but let's look at the practice of this idea. You there, in your chair, raise your arm so it mimics looking at a Pip-Boy. Now, since you don't HAVE a pip-boy in the real world, you have to use the controller right? But you can't drop your arm or the Pip-Boy will drop and you'll have accomplished nothing. Seeing the problem?

Natal is a solid ten years ahead of it's time. That camera cannot scan a skateboard and make it functional. That technology doesn't exist. Companies wouldn't spend THOUSANDS of dollars on mo-cap etc. if it was THIS easy to get things into games.

Furthermore, movement based gaming is Nintendo's bread and butter. If THEY aren't trying to introduce something like this, the smart money is that it's not... possible.

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