Project Natal: My Thumbs Work Fine, Thanks
One of the big stories to come out of this year’s E3 is Microsoft’s “Our Wii Is Bigger than Yours” throwdown to Nintendo in the form of Project Natal. Stealing the idea from Sony’s EyeToy failure, Project Natal is a camera that claims to offer full-body motion-tracking, as well as facial and voice recognition. So now instead of just waving your arms around to play games, you can jump around and flail your whole body! Awesome!
To highlight the advantages of the system, they produced a highlight video starring folks from the same stable of zero-acting-ability Old Navy-model rejects that Nintendo always uses, living in one of those Ikea-furnished houses no one actually has. The whole video is a gamer’s nightmare, but there are some fantastic standouts, including Dad doing a horrendous version of a pit stop, a little Hanson kid playing Monster (watch for the roar), and the lifeless conversation between Daughter and her ethnic friend about dress choice. You watch that and tell me it doesn’t beat using twin thumbsticks to shoot zombies in the head.
Here’s the thing, and maybe this is just me, but I don’t want to move around while I game. I’m quite content to place my ever-expanding ass on the couch and move no more than my thumbs while my character runs and jumps and swims and shoots and does whatever hell else I tell him to do while I remain perfectly stationary. If I want to perform a 360 nollie highside laser flip (or whatever) on a skateboard, I’m fine doing it with a combination of the right stick and left shoulder trigger. I don’t need to actually jump into the air in my living room. Likewise, I don’t need to actually kick my foot to kick a virtual soccer ball. Seems to me that if I were going to do that, I’d, I dunno, actually go outside and kick a friggin’ ball.
So please, game companies, stop with the “revolutionary” new ways for us to game. We don’t play with our families. We don’t have the necessary room to do all this thrashing around. And we really don’t want to move. You want to do something cool with game control? Put a button on the controller that automatically orders pizza. That I would use.
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One Response to “Project Natal: My Thumbs Work Fine, Thanks”
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June 3rd, 2009 at 11:13 pm
My first impressions from this vids is that it all seems cool, but I’m not nearly as excited as I was when we first started seeing vids for the Wii/Revolution 3 years ago. I also think that the “official” natal videos are a load of crap. I personally don’t see it working as advertised. First, you have a vid of 4 people sitting on the same sofa, and the sensor bar is supposed to be so discriminating that it knows which player is where to recognize the hand movements, but right in the middle of a turn everyone starts flailing around cheering and applauding but the sensor somehow “knows” that this isn’t part of the player’s game movements? I cry BS right off the bat. Second, I’ve seen the motion sense tech in the Nintendo DSi now, and unless Microsoft’s is about 10 years ahead of that, I predict that it will be about as succesfull and popular as the Nintendo Power Glove, which should be the SHINING example of why this crap just doesn’t really work like you hope it will
Lastly, I believe you echoed the sentiments from my Wii article from a couple of months ago, I game to RELAX, not get exercise. If a game requires me to conduct any movements above/behind the wrist area then it’s going to get limited gameplay from me. Don’t get me wrong, I actually dig some of the stuff I can do with the Wii Balance board, but unless I’m specifically in the mood for it, I don’t touch the thing. I’ve played through a bunch of Raving Rabbids TV Party, the unfinished mini games in that are almost exclusively “balance board” games.
I just don’t see this stuff catching on. I’m a firm believer with technology that just because you “can” doesn’t mean you should. Even getting past laziness I’m a firm believer that tactile feedback being massively important in gaming. When you press a button, you really need to feel it spring back up under your finger. How many minutes are you going to spend playing that racing game as part of the pit crew because when you crouched down you didn’t hit the “area” you were supposed to crouch down to just right and you consistently miss the tire, or misplace the air wratched and miss the tire change, or move your arms just every so slightly out of range so it doesn’t pick up you’re steering just right.
Gimme a game I can kick your ass at without having to move any muscle in in my body beyond my knuckles and I’ll be much happier than a game I’m sweating after playing.
Also, MS also needs to quite losing site of the fact that beyond the “revolutionary” controls of the Nintendo Wii, that the reason the Wii is still kicking MS and Sony ass in sales more because of the hardware and game PRICE POINTS than it is the tech. Sure, I can do something new and exciting like the Wii can…sure it costs twice as much, but see, It’s Better! Power Glove, Gameboy virtual, 3D stereographic goggles for games compatible with Geforce gfx cards…
I mean, where would the world be today without the technical advances made with the introduction of zoobahs, swatch watches and parachute pants?