Nintendo Turned Down Project Natal

[ChromeAlchemist]

To be honest, while I do agree with Nintendo's words on the project, I do think that considering the amount of processing power Natal is supposed to drain from the 360, the Wii would have taken a much larger hit.

Ultimately, there's no point in sacrificing like 30-40% of your processing power, especially for something you don't think will be all that good.

 

[Virgil]

I'm still a little hazy on the thing, is it like a better eyetoy?

Well, kind of, in that it's a camera-based setup that does motion tracking. The Eyetoy is just a basic webcam with a bit of video post-processing capabilities though - it's pretty simplistic. I don't know how much better the demo that Nintendo would have seen at the time would have been though. In the years since then the software behind it has spent a lot of time in Microsoft Research Labs.

I don't know if it's going to be good as a gaming peripheral, but as a piece of technology Natal (as demonstrated today) is pretty phenomenal. The fact that they're able to get a pair of cameras and some software to do what is effectively real-time motion capturing is a very impressive achievement.

 

[Zersy]

They made the freakin' Wii, and yet turned THIS down.

This is for the Nintendo audience. They wouldn't even need a controller, what can get more casual than that?

The Wii has a funny name and people are still used to controllers.

Project Natal sounds like a hardcore experimental project and people are not used to no controllers.

Should developers really have to make devices for a bigger audience ? The one they have right now is fine and theirs always gonna be more people later on.

 

[m.zajac]

To be honest, I'm quite glad that Nintendo turned down Project Natal. Their blisteringly large amount of, "shovel-ware" has been the most pathetic and epically failed attempt to have everyone in the world love video games.

 

[Eldarion]

Nintendo might be back on top today, but for a while the PlayStation put quite a dent in Nintendo's

Are you daft or just plain stupid?

Nintendo Console is the top console STILL.

Thats what he said.

"Nintendo may be back on top TODAY"

L2R

 

[Rayansaki]

Don't forget that NATAL on nintendo would probably be even more expensive than on X360. It uses a huge percentage of x360 processor, and for the capacity of the wii, it would require a dedicated processor to be included, so it would be more expensive. Also, Motion controls sux. Hope natal and arc die a quick death.

 

[CrystalShadow]

wow i did not know play station was supposed to be a snes but on a cd...
But after playing wild arms one and suikoden one, i am not surprised.

Have a good look at a PlayStation controller (the original, before analog controls were added) and an Snes controller side-by-side...

It's so blatantly close to being the same layout that it makes perfect sense that one started life as an expansion for the other...

 

[breadlord]

According to the insider: "Iwata-san only ever invests in something he can guarantee will work for a Nintendo audience."

That's funny.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Ah, Nintendo. It's always when they make one runaway success of a console that they turn away ideas that come back to bite them in the ass. Nintendo has a large list of in-house failures so I think they need to learn how to co-operate with other companies before it kills them.

Power Glove, E-Reader, Virtual Boy, The Game Cube GBA Cable, Gameboy Camera, Gamebay Printer, and most of all the failed Phillips CD-i(what Nintendo tried to pass as the SNES-CD @ $700 in 1986) show that Nintendo has got to step iy up in the ideas department.