Peter Molyneux: Natal Bigger Than The Mouse

[Spinozaad]

I smile at all the hate spat out by my fellow Escapees.
The same way I smiled at the hate spat at Modern Warfare 2. And how did that turn out, hmm?

Let's just, and this is only a suggestion, wait for the bloody thing to come out, no?

 

[mokes310]

What interests me more than anything else is the potential for Natal to do more than just assist us in gaming. I recall during the E3 demo of Natal; seeing people use it to browse through their Netflix queue, etc. That is where I see Natal being the precursor to additional motion/voice control capabilities.

What if you could come home, sit in front of your TV, say "on" and your entire media center powers up? Make a simple motion and change the channel. Say off and it turns off. Walk in to/out of a room and the lights turn on/off? In the mood for a romantic light setting, use simple motion and voice commands to adjust it to your liking. The point is that this technology not only helps innovate the world of gaming, but ushers in a new era in device convergence.

I, for one, am convinced that many of Natal's detractors will be looking awfully silly once they see the things that this device will allow us to do!

The point is not that the technology exists - voice and motion capture's essentially been around for a long while. The primary point is how well does it work. Voice controlled systems are notoriously imprecise (for a computer, it's a real pain to turn sound waves into words, then words into sensible sentences, then extract meaning from those sentences which is heavily dependent on context.) Motion control can get pretty nasty as well - this will all hinge on how accurately it's able to translate motion into instructions.

That information is not something you will not get from a tech demo. I'm not enthused about it until they can show me a physical product that reliably functions, not just a spliced-together video of what one could be (that had all the bad takes edited out.)

The second major hurdle is what software will support it. This is a big Microsoft-sponsored project IIRC, so I'd guess they're strongly encouraging developers to use it. Which is a good thing, because if there's not enough application to make its purchase worthwhile, it'll sputter and die no matter how good the technology is. The tech demo is slightly more useful in this regard, but they won't show you the times that you'll need to pull out a real controller because the sensors/firmware's not precise enough. If it's well done, there won't be any times like that, but we won't know from only the promotional material that's been released.

I agree with you to a certain extent, and yes, it is hard to make concrete assertions when only provided with short, preprogrammed tech demos. Natal's potential success' will definitely hinge on it's accuracy and adaptability.

I also agree with you, to a certain extent, about the software side of Natal and it's applications. Where I differ from you is that I can see this peripheral being utilized not just by the XBOX 360, but by a PC install base of MILLIONS. Put yourself in the shoes of a Microsoft Executive and it's very easy to see that this project could be utilized by many different platforms, not just the 360, and that's why I feel, provided it's solid tech, Natal will surpass all expectations. You don't invest this kind of cash to limit a tech to one platform...that's what Apple does

Sure, the potential for Natal to change the face of gaming as we know it is relatively small, but the potential for Natal to change how we interact with our media devices on a daily basis is limited only by the hardware. Does that make any sense?

It does make sense, but I disagree with it. It's possible Project Natal will going extremely well and it will snowball into a motion-sensing wave that spreads to all platforms, but I doubt it. Even if it does, it will take quite a while.

The hardware is only a very small part of that limitation, if you're extending it to a more open format like PCs. Good hardware's required, but it's persuading enough developers to make software that supports it to make it worthwhile will be the chief problem. Persuading developers like that is much easier on a proprietary console than it is on more open platforms like PCs, something Microsoft is well aware of.

There's a snowball effect when you're dealing with supporting additional types of hardware. A similar one occurs with porting to different operating systems. To make supporting that new hardware/OS worth the effort, it already needs to be widespread enough among the consumer base to be cost effective. To be widespread enough among the consumer base, the product needs to have enough supporting software to be a good platform. It's sort of a catch-22. Breaking into that with an entirely new peripheral is very difficult, even if the company has the funds to tough it out for a while.

In other words, not having enough software that supports Project Natal will dissuade people from buying it, and people not buying it will mean that it's not attractive for developers to develop for it. Getting past that involves a long-term investment on Microsoft's part (like the XBox division was in the first place.)

It is possible that Project Natal will beat the odds, but I've already seen quite a few innovative peripherals fail because they couldn't break into the market (sometimes through no fault of their design.) Being backed my Microsoft helps, but it's still too chancy to rely on it. Releasing it for the X-Box 360 - where they have far more leverage over the developers - is still the best place for Project Natal in the foreseeable future.

Good points indeed, and perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised! I do believe, not relying on Natal, that motion/voice controls will be every more frequent in our devices. In my opinion, it's the next logical step along the path that is device/tech convergence.

And I thank you sir, for providing a thoughtful and insightful discussion without resorting to needless name calling

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Awesome! Because Peter Molyneux never exaggerates anything ever!

 

[Dimbo_Sama]

He likens Natal to another revolutionary human interface device, the mouse, and said that Natal could offer just as dramatic a shift in how we communicate with our computing devices.

......so it'll only be okay then?

 

[PhantomCritic]

The more Molyneux prattles on about Natal, the more likely it is for me to not buy it.

And, of course, Peter Molyneux is always spot-on with his hype.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

And thus, Molynuex again opens that pit of conflict and bad wording that we call a mouth.

The EyeToy comes to mind...

 

[Treblaine]

Anyone remember the EyeToy?

That was Sony's bad wasn't it, they said they have learned from their mistakes and they say that Microsoft are making all the same mistakes and think that just increasing the fidelity in the solution.

Well they would say that wouldn't they but do they have a point? Is Natal just "Eye Toy HD/3D"?

To be fair Natal has the software side as well, it's actually programmed to recognize human figures and track their position and movement. My PS3 EyeToy apps are more of the "hey! something's moving! OMG I heard a sound!" variety. That said, Mesmerize is still hella fun to play with.

I have huge doubts about motion controlled games, since there's no tactile feedback. I haven't seen anything yet that makes me think "oh wow this is really accessible and/or immersive"... in fact I find it's more frustrating when my character won't do exactly what I want in Wii games than with a normal control pad.

I'm with you on that, even for Rail-Shooters like House of the Dead I prefer them a 10x more on PC with a mouse-aim than to use a light-gun or Wii-mote. See the mouse may not have feedback, but it does have variable resistance, depending on how hard you press it down on the mat, and if you are dead on target you don't have to lock and hold, let relax and it stays still.

Most of these motion feedback things suffer from a distinct lack of feedback, even with a gamepad you know if you pressed a button, how much you moved the analogue stick and the amount of pressure on analogue triggers.

I still don't think we have come any where NEAR the full potential of CURRENT gamepads as used on consoles. For example most FPS games treat the analogue triggers as if they were digital buttons, makes sense as a gun either fires or doesn't fire.

But consider much under-appreciated Medal of Honor Airborne for PS3, though overshadowed by COD4 on release it had what I consider really unique and innovative controls (on the PS3 at least) with a sophisticated lean-peek system controlled by the six-axis sensor and the analogue triggers were used too. For example with the sniper rifle you didn't just hold a buttons to steady your aim, what you had to do was gently depress the trigger, till it was just a fraction of an ounce away from firing, in this state all the shakes disappear and stick sensitivity goes down = head-shots every time. Depress fully to fire, there was a visual feedback to indicate how much the trigger was depressed, it was hard at first but worth it.

Then there are gamepad accessories like FPS-Freek, that I hear hugely increase the aiming potential with analogue stick. We also still have not really explored haptic feedback on gamepads, I don't just mean rumble, Rumble could disappear for good and I could hardly care, how about variable-resistance on the analogue triggers so for example you could on-the-fly have two or three stage triggers, many real life weapons have two-stage triggers for practical reasons (semi-auto to full-auto).

Thing is, as much as corporations love it, revolutions are rare in technology. Most of the time it is a case of EVOLUTION, just look at the progress from the NES controller to the PS3 controller, how the layout and features and even accessories have changed and the Darwin like competitive interaction between the big companies create new adaptations for better and better game experiences.

Of course for half this time PC has remained mostly unchanged, like how the Great White Shark as the perfect predator remained unchanged for hundreds of millions of years... but torturing that analogy a bit more, after playing MOF: Airborne I wonder if the Mouse + KB has come to it's limit?

 

[Snor]

I am so done believing you molyneux (or polyfuck as called amongst friends here)
You ain't fooling me after fable 1 and 2. he's a great marketeer though

 

[Captain Bobbossa]

I was acctually quite interested in Natal..... untill this Molineux twat started going on about how brilliant it is and how fantstic fable 3 will be.... I really couldnt ive two shits about it now.

 

[Gamegodtre]

time for the uses of Natal in a nutshell
Minigames (and lots of em think Wii but worse)
Skating, Surfing (and anything that involves a board and a straight line that it can be put on since i doubt it'll let you steer and will be as broken as Tony Hawk Ride)
Weight Loss Games (cause going outside and walking for 30 minutes to a hour a day is harder then doing it inside)
Rail Shooters (do i even need to say it)
A good console RTS? (this one is a maybe)
and a bunch of other failures of ideas mixed in with one good one

 

[Gamegodtre]

Peter Molyneux is bigger than Jesus!

considering people were shorter back then yeah he probably is.

 

[WIUtomato]

while I admit to being intreagued by the idea of natal, I thought MS had learned its lesson by letting him hype the bollocks out of Fable 1... why are they letting him talk again??? "... you have no control over the dog, let me say that again..." NO, no talkie you!

 

[Del-Toro]

I was told Fable 2 would be mind blowing. It wasn't. You lied to me Peter Molyneux. I even pre ordered that shit. May or may not have been special edition. It was just Fable 1 with a tedious job system and guns. The latter being pretty badass. The former being bullshit. Not a game breaker, but c'mon. It was fun the first time around, but still too short. Still not enough meat. I guess I'm not getting Fable 3.

 

[The Diabolical Biz]

And guess who is paid by MS?

Everyone who works there?

Logic wins again!

 

[zehydra]

I personally think this probably will have a better chance of success than the wii, since the wii invested in low-quality graphical power (whereas the xbox 360 has much better graphical power), and nintendo had invested in casual gaming. It didn't invest in casual gaming because of the motion control, the DS was also popular with casual gamers.

Regardless, I think simply because it's on the xbox you might find some better quality games that use it than the wii.

 

[NamesAreHardToPick]

I'm with you on that, even for Rail-Shooters like House of the Dead I prefer them a 10x more on PC with a mouse-aim than to use a light-gun or Wii-mote. See the mouse may not have feedback, but it does have variable resistance, depending on how hard you press it down on the mat, and if you are dead on target you don't have to lock and hold, let relax and it stays still.

Yeah, good game controls > poor simulation. While the Wii is horrible as a light-gun, a an arcade cabinet with a nice big screen and a gun that's got a proper wieght and grip and a motor for recoil will have me shooting all day. I totally love Time Crisis, and even the cheesy Point Blank shooting gallery games.

Most of these motion feedback things suffer from a distinct lack of feedback, even with a gamepad you know if you pressed a button, how much you moved the analogue stick and the amount of pressure on analogue triggers.

That's the hard bit with handling the tilt-controls on the sixaxis, I can never tell if I'm "all the way over" and wasting time with further input. With an analog stick or digital pad I at least know when I'm giving 'er all she's got.

But consider much under-appreciated Medal of Honor Airborne for PS3, though overshadowed by COD4 on release it had what I consider really unique and innovative controls (on the PS3 at least) with a sophisticated lean-peek system controlled by the six-axis sensor and the analogue triggers were used too. For example with the sniper rifle you didn't just hold a buttons to steady your aim, what you had to do was gently depress the trigger, till it was just a fraction of an ounce away from firing, in this state all the shakes disappear and stick sensitivity goes down = head-shots every time. Depress fully to fire, there was a visual feedback to indicate how much the trigger was depressed, it was hard at first but worth it.

Metal Gear Solid 3 used analog controls like that as well, making it one of my favorite shooters of all time. Press square lightly to bring your gun to hip-firing position, press it fully to fire. Managing your own nerves under pressure was extremely important, busting off a few rounds when you just meant to aim the gun would almost always spoil your stealth and get you killed. I was really disappointed when some variation of the scheme wasn't used in MGS4.

Then there are gamepad accessories like FPS-Freek, that I hear hugely increase the aiming potential with analogue stick. We also still have not really explored haptic feedback on gamepads, I don't just mean rumble, Rumble could disappear for good and I could hardly care, how about variable-resistance on the analogue triggers so for example you could on-the-fly have two or three stage triggers, many real life weapons have two-stage triggers for practical reasons (semi-auto to full-auto).
...
Of course for half this time PC has remained mostly unchanged, like how the Great White Shark as the perfect predator remained unchanged for hundreds of millions of years... but torturing that analogy a bit more, after playing MOF: Airborne I wonder if the Mouse + KB has come to it's limit?

I think that would be brilliant. I'd love to see feedback applied to analog sticks. If you're sneaking along with a wall to your right, you can push the stick right only as far as the wall... it would let you feel an obstacle to make up for the general lack of physical awareness. I don't see why the same thing couldn't be applied to mice, honestly it would even have value for business apps, being able to tell by touch as you crossed boundaries on the screen or reached the dragging limit of an object in a UI.

 

[Gamegodtre]

snip

Wholeheartedly agree.

What confuses me is the simple idea of convenience that people seem to be forgetting here.

Why is the mouse so easy and good to use? It's accurate and you rest your hand on it, using minimal motion to move the cursor. You never have to lift your hand, it's genius and really comfortable. Now, if we had let's say one of those Minority Report interfaces where the person is spastaculously waving and flailing his arms around to navigate menus, would this really catch on for office work or computer usage? I highly doubt it. Too much work, arms tire too fast.

Natal= same problem.

Why would anyone wave his arm to the side to move to the next item in a dashboard instead of just moving an analogue stick half a centimeter? I don't get it.

i have a theory about that and it goes people like shiny crap

 

[gamercow]

To this day, the best press I've seen for Natal is that dude playing Burnout with no controllers. That said, I think that Natal's sweet spot will be used in conjunction with standard controllers. Lean-peek in FPS comes to mind, and I'm sure there are others. They should definitely be used in conjunction together, rather than thought of separately.
But all the hype-masters behind motion sensors forget one basic rule of video games. They are there as a means to escape for most people. To do things that we normally can't, like be in the Marines, or slay a dragon, or drive a car at 250 mph, or throw a hail mary in the superbowl. Motion sensing controllers deaden this a little for most people.