Editor-at-Large Matt Casamassina dishes the dirt on the behind-the-scenes murmurings at the event. http://wii.ign.com/articles/107/1077008p1.html
Natal, though -- the motion offering from Microsoft -- not so much. The same studio rep calls Natal a big, buggy mess. "It's sh*t," he adds, saying that it just doesn't work as promised. That it's slow and that the camera is imprecise, which he notes, is causing some major development woes.
He refers to a development conference Microsoft held not so long ago in which Peter Molyneux of Fable fame (presently, creative director at Microsoft Game Studios) took the stage and attempted to demo the publisher's much-publicized Milo Natal project. Molyneux apparently called someone from the audience to the stage and asked them to interact with the virtual boy, but it didn't go to plan. Natal's camera failed to see the person accurately because he was wearing a black trench coat. After some fiddling, he was asked to remove his trench coat and -- whoops -- wore a black shirt underneath. When it still didn't work, he was invited to take his seat again.
Next, Molyneux said that Milo could interact with illustrations drawn to paper and scanned by the camera. He asked the audience for suggestions. "You could see him cocking his head and listening for the right key words, and then finally he heard something the game would recognize," my development source explains. It was a cat. So he invited someone from the audience to ascend the steps to the stage and illustrate the feline on paper. When Natal attempted to scan the horribly scribbled drawing, it instead picked up the Abercrombie & Fitch logo on the person's sweater.
I laugh at this but try to play devil's advocate. Okay, I say, so it's obvious you're not a fan, but somebody must be getting this thing to work well or it wouldn't be on the slate to ship this year. I ask if he knows of any other studios struggling with Natal.
"How about Rare and Lionhead? They're just going to try to make launch and then they're going to patch everything later," he says, laughing.
I'm very interested in the platform, but I haven't entrenched myself in Natal development. Later, when I bump into a colleague, I ask them if they have heard any behind-the-scenes rumblings about development trouble with Microsoft's casual entry device. He turns to me and says that yes, he has -- that studios are telling him they're struggling to get it working.
It's anecdotal and unproven and I know from experience that it's never so black and white. The fact of the matter is, the Wii remote shipped with so many problems that Nintendo was forced to release an upgrade device that even needs constant recalibration. And Wii MotionPlus? Word on the street is that the heat from your hands de-calibrates the sensor. It's still not perfect by any means, but it's workable, and I think that by the time Natal ships, it will be workable too, even if developers have to kill themselves getting it there. Lest we not forget that there are some amazing games for Wii and whether by ingenuity or simple trickery, the motion controls sometimes feel fantastic.
I always resign myself to the no comment or the no idea, but at GDC I struck a bit of a niblet when a developer said Nintendo told him it would be ready to roll with Wii 2 in 2012.
See beginning of article for Move impressions.
Natal, though -- the motion offering from Microsoft -- not so much. The same studio rep calls Natal a big, buggy mess. "It's sh*t," he adds, saying that it just doesn't work as promised. That it's slow and that the camera is imprecise, which he notes, is causing some major development woes.
He refers to a development conference Microsoft held not so long ago in which Peter Molyneux of Fable fame (presently, creative director at Microsoft Game Studios) took the stage and attempted to demo the publisher's much-publicized Milo Natal project. Molyneux apparently called someone from the audience to the stage and asked them to interact with the virtual boy, but it didn't go to plan. Natal's camera failed to see the person accurately because he was wearing a black trench coat. After some fiddling, he was asked to remove his trench coat and -- whoops -- wore a black shirt underneath. When it still didn't work, he was invited to take his seat again.
Next, Molyneux said that Milo could interact with illustrations drawn to paper and scanned by the camera. He asked the audience for suggestions. "You could see him cocking his head and listening for the right key words, and then finally he heard something the game would recognize," my development source explains. It was a cat. So he invited someone from the audience to ascend the steps to the stage and illustrate the feline on paper. When Natal attempted to scan the horribly scribbled drawing, it instead picked up the Abercrombie & Fitch logo on the person's sweater.
I laugh at this but try to play devil's advocate. Okay, I say, so it's obvious you're not a fan, but somebody must be getting this thing to work well or it wouldn't be on the slate to ship this year. I ask if he knows of any other studios struggling with Natal.
"How about Rare and Lionhead? They're just going to try to make launch and then they're going to patch everything later," he says, laughing.
I'm very interested in the platform, but I haven't entrenched myself in Natal development. Later, when I bump into a colleague, I ask them if they have heard any behind-the-scenes rumblings about development trouble with Microsoft's casual entry device. He turns to me and says that yes, he has -- that studios are telling him they're struggling to get it working.
It's anecdotal and unproven and I know from experience that it's never so black and white. The fact of the matter is, the Wii remote shipped with so many problems that Nintendo was forced to release an upgrade device that even needs constant recalibration. And Wii MotionPlus? Word on the street is that the heat from your hands de-calibrates the sensor. It's still not perfect by any means, but it's workable, and I think that by the time Natal ships, it will be workable too, even if developers have to kill themselves getting it there. Lest we not forget that there are some amazing games for Wii and whether by ingenuity or simple trickery, the motion controls sometimes feel fantastic.
I always resign myself to the no comment or the no idea, but at GDC I struck a bit of a niblet when a developer said Nintendo told him it would be ready to roll with Wii 2 in 2012.
See beginning of article for Move impressions.
