The Xbox 360’s Natal won’t just be all casual games and virtual boys in your TV – it’ll have “real, hardcore triple-A” titles, according to Microsoft.
Between Sony’s “PlayStation Wand” motion technology and Microsoft’s Project Natal, Sony was the only one of the two to make a case about how their tech could be used for hardcore, traditional games like real-time strategy and first-person shooter titles. Natal, meanwhile, had a demo of a 3D Breakout-clone, some sort of art application, and Peter Molyneux’s Milo. Not exactly core gamer type of stuff.
Microsoft doesn’t think we’ll be left to dry when it comes to Natal’s offerings, however. “We’ll have games that are specifically designed to work only with Natal – not just arcadey games, but real, hardcore, triple-A titles,” project director Alex Kipman told Eurogamer.
Kipman described games that take advantage not only of Natal’s motion-recognition, but match it with more traditional controller-based gameplay. “Think about a first-person shooter where I’m using the controller but I’m doing facial tracking by just moving around and looking round corners,” he said.
The experience, he said, could work to provide simultaneously enjoyable experiences for hardcore and casual gamers alike where the 360 reads Natal and controller inputs simultaneously, like a Halo type game where one player will using the controller while the other uses Natal to chuck grenades or drive. Sounds interesting, but we’ll just have to wait and see if you can really make an experience that’s compelling on multiple levels like that.
