If there is one industry destined to be of epic proportions, it will be 2010’s motion control smack down. In the red corner it’s Microsoft’s Natal and in the blue corner is PlayStation Move…and Codemasters it would seem. Though not condemning in any sense of the word, Codemasters Studios VP Gavin Chesire recently gave a less than positive assessment of Microsoft’s forthcoming foray into motion control.
“I’m sure there’ll be games attuned to Natal and that’s be great, but what you can’t do is back-engineer it into something you’re currently doing. And that’s where it’ll fail,” said Cheshire, in an interview with Edge. He was a bit kinder to the Move. “Sony’s sticks are quite good, too – they’re fun and something physical you can hold in your hand, which I prefer to just your hands in the air.”
His overall assessment wasn’t entirely rosy though, “But it’s the same thing for software.”
To its credit, Natal does sport some interesting features. The facial and audio recognition are pretty cool as are a number of other promised goodies, but the question does remain how much will the lack of a controller limit the game? While steering a car or bopping a buzzer is certainly doable, Sony isn’t wrong in their persistent claim that buttons are necessary to play many games. Shooters for instance, which could stand to benefit dramatically well implemented motion controller, need at least a few buttons, if only to pull a trigger. As the indomitable Kevin Butler put it, are we supposed to point our fingers at things shouting, “p-kew! p-kew!”?
Gaming is a medium that is very much tied to controllers, and no matter how many celebrities Microsoft gets to endorse them at E3, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re likely limiting themselves largely to the realm of novelty gaming. That said, looking at the amount of cash that Nintendo has raked in by capturing the novelty crowd, maybe that’s what Microsoft is aiming for.
