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More Natal applications revealed in LA Times preview originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rumor: Project Natal priced at $150; bundled with Arcade SKU for $300 originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 26 May 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Rumor: Natal test kit photos reveal 'motorized tilt mechanism,' power cord originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Project Natal price to launch with room to drop originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It’s not every day that the head of a multi-billion dollar corporation apologizes to you, so excuse us if we drink deeply of Steve Ballmer’s statement to IGN, in which he apologized for referencing a new 360 console to launch in 2010 last week.

Specifically, he said “I confused the issue with my poorly chosen words. There is no news in my comments. Things are as reported after E3. Sorry.” Tell you what, Steve, you give us one of your patented “World’s Greatest Back Rubs,” and all is forgiven. (Also, we’re sure you meant a new Xbox 360 bundle, right?)

Ballmer sorry about confusing Natal 2010 statement originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not so, says Microsoft. The red jump suits had nothing to do with Natal’s difficulty in picking up certain types of clothing or to compensate for the studio lighting, it was just a joke.

“Actually, the red jumpsuits were just for laughs,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Kotaku. “The Jimmy Fallon crew wanted something funny for the guests to wear and decided on red jumpsuits and turtlenecks. We just wonder if the red jumpsuits will start a new fashion trend.”

No. No, they won’t.

What you may not have known, however, is that Epic’s Unreal Engine, which is already powering some of the biggest games in the business, was utilized by Microsoft to create some of the tech demos for the E3 Project Natal demonstration. Speaking to IndustryGamers as part of a larger interview, Epic VP Mark Rein noted with a grin, “I think [these technologies] will create great opportunities for us as an engine. The Paint Party game they showed and the other one [Ricochet] are both Unreal powered. Microsoft licensed Unreal Engine 3 for a whole bunch of games for that thing – you just saw the first two. We’re really excited.”

“We’re going to work with Microsoft and share all that stuff they added into Unreal with our partners; not just Natal, but also things like avatar integration. We were like, ‘if you’re developing all this stuff, do you mind if we share with all our licensees to give them a big head start?’ So Natal we’re just over the moon about – it’s the new platform and who’s the first engine on it?” he said excitedly.

Although Epic is clearly involved with Natal from the start, Rein also said Sony’s PlayStation Motion setup looked “quite cool.” He added, “Again, I think that creates big opportunities. We’re the biggest 3D engine on the platform, so hopefully lots of developers will want to make 3D things for that and [work with us].”

He noted that what impressed him about Paint Party is that you think about painting as a 2D experience, but “they actually managed to incorporate some of the motion sensing – like

how it reacts depending on how hard you throw the paint – to make it easier and cooler for kids and families to play.” Rein continued, “It really used our engine, like some of the particle effects, our 3D rendering, etc. The other game used our engine even more, since it’s more into the screen 3D [motion].”

“One thing I really like about Natal is that Microsoft put a lot of research into it. When you see Natal, it’s not like EyeToy; it’s not just looking for movements of things. The technology

actually utilizes bones in the human skeleton. We’ve seen the simulation where you actually see your body on the screen – they ‘ve got a bunch of tools for fine-tuning games and it’s really a lot of research. I mean that shows just how much money Microsoft has. They had these brilliant Microsoft researchers who develop stuff for way off in the future work on this.”

Although Microsoft’s Natal turns you into the controller and Sony’s PlayStation Motion involves holding a wand or two in your hands, Rein envisions creating games that could be for both platforms. “I think they have slightly different characteristics, but bring it on,” he said enthusiastically.

It’s certainly an interesting idea. To remove controllers from the equation and have players sit in front of the screen with a pair of cameras and a microphone sensing their visual and aural input and interpreting it for gaming.

Amazingly, after a wave of speculation at the press conference, it seems to really work. What impressed the most at E3?

What Could Work

It’s impossible not to have some optimism for the Natal project. After all, a lot of what they showed worked, and worked quite well. The brick-breaker styled game had players smacking balls with their hands and feet, and the connection between player and game seemed perfectly in sync. Collision detection also seemed mint; that kind of ease of use could be fantastic for some Arcade offerings or more casual, “one screen” games where there is little or no movement in a game world.

The tech demo shown at Microsoft’s Conference was a great example of the device’s capabilities

I also enjoyed the changes they’ve made to the NXE when using Natal. Automatically signing in by simply walking in front of your television looks neat, and navigating the different menus by swiping your hands seems functional if you just want to rent a movie or watch some TV shows, and you have no need to sync up a controller.

Personally, the most notable showing for me was the racing demonstration.  Journalists at E3 were playing Burnout by placing their hands in the air like they were holding a steering wheel and their feet on the floor. With small adjustments to the placement of feet and hands, you can accelerate, brake, and steer. It’s a neat idea, and it’s promising to see that Natal can be that precise in measuring your movements.

There’s certainly much promise in what was shown of Natal at E3. The device itself is slick, and the cameras seem quite capable of tracking one or several people, just like Microsoft boasted.

But what didn’t look as impressive?

What Needs Improvement

For all the good there is in the Project Natal videos and demonstrations out there, a number of things just don’t add up for conventional games. Some of the basics of what makes a video game seem to be neglected.

Movement immediately came to mind as something a pure body-centric control scheme lacks. Natal can track your movements precisely, but all of the demonstrations of the device had the player in a stationery position. Today’s games are about free-roaming and the ability to explore. How would this be possible without a controller? There are probably some solutions Microsoft is working on behind closed doors. Are any of them as simple and as elegant as simply using an analog stick? Probably not.

Peter Molyneux’s “Milo” showed off some impressive features, but controlled promotion videos are hard to trust

Another issue is reliability. Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov, in an interview with Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, noted that, “the reliability of [motion controls] is the key problem.” The vast majority of players and developers probably agree with this sentiment. Many Wii games continue to struggle with this issue of reliability, especially when getting the controllers to register the depth of the motions you make. As Alexey points out, buttons are extremely reliable; when you pull the right trigger in Gears of War, you’re going to shoot, no doubt about it. Although Natal demonstrations seem to have a high level of reliability, they are also supervised, taking place in areas with minimal clutter. Can we expect the same level of responsiveness in our homes when Natal launches? Obviously, that remains to be seen, but if camera-based games of the past are anything to go by, it will be an uphill battle for Microsoft to get Natal working smoothly in the average home.

Other demos just seemed a little lacking. Peter Molyneux’s Milo demonstration feels like one of those. Mind you, it’s an extremely high-concept and impressive demo at first glance, with Milo commenting on the clothes of players and tracking their eyes and facial expressions.

However, upon reading additional coverage of Milo as well as re-watching what they showed at the press conference, hopes begin to sink, most notably when one recalls that artificial intelligence hasn’t really been honed to a high level of coherence yet. As Steven Totilo of Kotaku points out, Milo can tell if you’re asking a question by the tone of your voice, but he can’t tell what you’re saying. So for all of its impressive qualities, I can’t imagine something like Milo being a compelling product in the near-future of technology. It seems too canned to work out as a truly dynamic AI. When I think about Milo, my mind immediately goes to Sega’s interesting but dubious Seaman for the Dreamcast.

You know a device is early in development when one of the highlighting demos involves painting

Finally, there’s the matter of duration. The aforementioned racing demo was very impressive, but do you really want to have your hands hovering in front of you for hours on end? I play quite a bit of Burnout Paradise, and when I do, it’s usually an afternoon’s worth of play time. Under Natal’s control scheme, my weak muscles would quickly become withered and sore after playing. The issue of sustaining positions like this seems at odds with the act of sitting down and relaxing to play a game.

Final Thoughts on Project Natal

Ultimately, I don’t think Natal will be the world shattering experience it’s made out to be. In time, perhaps, but not in the years immediately following its release. Instead, it seems more like a single component in the make-up of a video game, to be used in a conjunction with a more traditional controller.

Then again, my assumptions could be completely wrong. There weren’t many Natal demos to take in at E3. Perhaps Microsoft announced Natal too early. It made sense to go ahead and do so at E3, of course, when the crowds are available (and when the competition announces something similar). This is Microsoft, though. Like Nintendo and Sony, when they have something to say, we all listen. Delaying this announcement a few months and showing some more substantial games may have been a better strategy.

Now, regardless of whether you think Natal is a good direction for Xbox or not, all that’s left to do is wait. If it’s done right, this could very well be a step in the next major industry revision. With a little compromise to Microsoft’s “the controller is the enemy” ideology, Natal could be one of the most significant additions to Xbox.

What sorts of concerns do you have about Natal? What games or features do you think could be done with it? And what do you think it will end up costing when it’s released? Do you expect to see it this time next year, when Sony plans to launch their motion control system? Sound off in the comment box below.

Source http://www.talkxbox.com/editorial148.html

Kotaku editor Stephen Totilo had the opportunity to give Microsoft’s Project Natal the once-over, thought he had the device all figured out, spotting three flaws in the system. However, it would seem that by his own admission, all three analysis were wrong.

His first thought was that it would not be able to handle multi-player gaming, but project director Kudo Tsunoda directed his attention to a display which showed how easily the device was reading both their bodies as they stood before the sensors.

“We appeared on screen as simplified, mutli-jointed stick figure skeletons within silhouettes of our bodies. It clearly saw us as separate people. There would be no problem, he said, for the system to support a game that let us play at the same time and track our movements separately.”

Totilo thought that he might be able to get away with playing Burnout Paradise one-handed, but it seems that notion, too, was in error.

“I guessed that it was reading my hands as a single unit moving in space and that it wouldn’t be programmed to know or care if I put one hand behind my back. It did. When I put my hand behind my back and just waved one hand in front of the TV, the Burnout car failed to steer. The Natal needed to see two hands. Maybe it’s cooler to drive one-handed, but Natal not letting me do it was impressive in its own way.”

Another thought was that Natal would have to be played in bright light, but the dim illumination of the hotel rooms, barring Molyneux’s own Milo demo room, would seem to prove otherwise.

Finally, Totilo also thought that while Project Natal could pick up a wide range of body movements, finer movements (such as those by individual fingers) would not be picked up. And while the demo in use did not provide actual proof of the concept, using a short stick to represent each hand, Tsunoda claimed such detection was actually possible, “though the sensitivity would be different at different distances.”

In conclusion, Totilo figures there will be plenty of time to analyze and scrutinize the device, but “So far, it’s fun. And it works.”