The Project Natal. The Revolution has Come!

Posts Tagged ‘motion’

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything regarding Braid developer Jonathan Blow’s next project, The Witness — however, if a recent post on Blow’s blog is any indication, the “philosophical, and quiet” game might be moving in an unexpected direction. According to the post, Blow is “hiring another programmer into the new company, to do very interesting work with full-body motion tracking.”

We contacted Blow to see if this new hire would be working on The Witness, and whether the motion tracking technology mentioned is Project Natal. He responded by saying he “can’t talk about this right now,” and added, “it may not even actually happen (depending on whether I can find someone qualified to do it!).”

So, there you have it. If you’ve got experience with body movin’ (body, body movin’), it sounds like Blow could use a hand. And an arm! And a torso. And a … yeah, you got it.

Jonathan Blow hiring ‘full-body motion tracking’ programmer originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Shingo Takatsuka, the progenitor of the long-running Pro Evolution Soccer series, recently had a few choice words to share with IGN on the subject of incorporating motion control into the franchise. Though the producer of that other soccer game has stated his indifference to motion control schemes, Takatsuka explained Konami is highly intrigued by Project Natal and the heretofore “officially” unnamed PlayStation Motion Controller — intrigued to the extent that he’s “looking at integrating those devices into our games very aggressively.”

As we all know, soccer is the most fatiguing activity any human can participate in, so we expect that a Natal-ized version of PES would be appropriately taxing. However, given the sport’s limited employment of hands, we’d be curious to see how Sony’s motion-sensing peripheral would be utilized. There are few pieces of gaming hardware we’d outright refuse to give a fair shot, but shoe adapters might just be beyond our capacity for humiliation.

Konami ‘aggressively’ looking into motion control for PES series originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Speaking to Destructoid, Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda had some bad news for gamers hoping to see old Xbox 360 game updated with Natal controls. The Natal team has been able to effectively implement motion controls in older titles — like Beautiful KatamariSpace Invaders Extreme and — but Tsunoda intimated that it required large portions of code to be changed. According to Tsunoda, it’s not something that developers could easily patch into older titles. In other words, if you want your favorite pre-Natal title to support motion control, you’ll have to hope for a full-fledged re-release from the publisher.

That’s definitely a blow for those hoping to enjoy some of their favorite games with motion control, especially considering Sony can patch motion control into older PS3 titles. Here’s hoping Namco sees the light and releases Beautiful Natal-amari once Project Natal hits retail shelves.

Don’t expect old 360 games to add Natal support originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The new motion controllers for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are likely to make big appearances at this year’s Tokyo Game Show. While both Microsoft and Sony are attempting to take away some of Nintendo’s mindshare with its new controllers, Square Enix head Yoichi Wada believes neither company will be truly successful. “Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine. Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small,” Wada told the Financial Times.

Wada also believes that the three platforms will start looking more like each other by the year 2011, when he believes Nintendo will release the fabled successor of the Wii. The system will add features found on the PS3/360, and may also introduce a brand new controller. It’ll certainly be interesting to see what moves consumers when an HD Nintendo system exists concurrently with motion-enabled Microsoft and Sony systems.

Square Enix head predicts new Wii in 2011, says motion ‘impact’ for Xbox, PlayStation will be ’small’ originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While most people were struck with thoughts of the future when Microsoft’s motion-control apparatus Project Natal was unveiled, Rare couldn’t get its mind off the past. In a recent interview with VideoGamer, 15-year Rare veteran George Andreas explained the device “gives us an opportunity to maybe at some point in the future investigate some of those older IPs.”

Andreas was particularly excited about one unnamed Rare franchise which would be “absolutely phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal” if it should incoroporate Natal. He added, “I think it would be an absolutely world-beating product. But we need to explore a little bit more in that direction.” Got any ideas? Our money’s on Jetpac — though we suppose a motion-controlled Conker’s Bad Fur Day would have its humorous, bawdy merits. Just … make sure the blinds are closed while you’re playing it, okay?

Rare wants to revitalize classic IP with Natal, beat world originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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