The Project Natal. The Revolution has Come!

Posts Tagged ‘guitar-hero’

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick discussed the current state of the game industry and Activision's position within it. Regarding Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's Move motion controllers, Kotick believes they will "excite" consumers, though he doesn't expect them to "rush out and buy millions of Xboxes just for Natal." Still, the novelty of the hardware combined with the impending marketing barrage will "generate new excitement for a whole new set of video games" according to Kotick.

Concerning other sectors of the industry, Kotick didn't seem afraid of social and mobile games eating into Activision's business. "I honestly don't think FarmVille or Tap Tap Revenge is having any impact on Guitar Hero," When confronted with the fact that Guitar Hero sales have seen a massive decline in the last year, however, Kotick admitted that Activision "misjudged opportunities" and noted that the company is "doing a better job now of accessing what's important to the audience in terms of features of the games, music and design of the instruments."

Kotick also brushed off the possibility that gamers may start shying away from physical retail titles in favor of cheap (or free) downloadable games. "We could go either way on Call of Duty but we can't download guitars for Guitar Hero anytime soon," said Kotick, adding that he is "not worried in the near term" about cheap iPhone games competing with retail.

The CEO isn't worried about Activision "missing the boat" on any impending downloadable transition. "In 20 years, we haven't missed the boat," said Kotick, "In fact what's made us so successful is that we know when to get on the boat." So take that, boats.

Activision's Kotick knows when to get on the boat originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Guitar Hero peripheral maker Red Octane has been adding approximately 2.5 plastic instruments per year to each American household for nearly four years now. If you're using your computer from atop a stack of music game peripherals like we are, you'll be happy (or perhaps dismayed) to hear Red Octane prez Kai Huang told Digital Spy that his company is looking into Project Natal and "a lot of other different technologies that could enhance the Guitar Hero playing experience."

Huang specifically picked out Natal to address the "many different things you can do with it," echoing statements made by MTV Games last month on the next iteration of the Rock Band franchise. He outlined some potential implementations in the "motion detecting; maybe sensing how you're playing, or the ability to use it for interactivity purposes and taking advantage of it for party purposes." Huang, however, remained cagey on specifics, restating his company is still "evaluating it." Though the tech's still in its relative infancy, as of right now it seems that next year's music-rhythm games are going to feel very different than this year's bunch. We've dropped a demonstration of how awesome you might look playing them after the break!

Continue reading Red Octane 'evaluating' Project Natal, other motion devices

Red Octane 'evaluating' Project Natal, other motion devices originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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