The CEO of Silicon Knights said that he “doesn’t see how Natal is going to help me tell a better story or create better content.”
Denis Dyack, founder of Canadian developer Silicon Knights, went on record about Microsoft’s motion control technology, Natal. Dyack founded Silicon Knights in 1992 and has made games such as Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain on the PS1, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for the GameCube, and Too Human for the Xbox 360. He is currently rumored to working on several unannounced projects.
“I’m always interested to see how new technologies turn out,” said Dyack. “I’m a big believer in software over hardware.” He went on:
Silicon Knights has always pretty much focused on what can we do as entertainers. I’m sure it’s very possible to have success in those areas, but [Natal] is not something that I really look at and go ‘yes, we’ll definitely do something on that.’ I know a lot of people have expressed excitement and that’s great to see. We want to create games that are very content driven and tell great stories and I don’t see how Natal is going to help me tell a better story or create better content.
Dyack is nothing but controversial, like when he expressed that, if it were up to him, the games press wouldn’t be able to see games until they were finished. This soundbite snubbing of Microsoft’s Natal initiative sounds like more of the same from Dyack.
In my opinion, the use of any particular technology will not automatically make better games, it is how that technology is used. So I agree that any game using Natal or developed for the Wii is not better simply because it uses motion technology, but when a game seamlessly blends that technology into the game experience, it can be very rewarding. A game designer that can figure out how to make this happen with any genre of game will have pushed the industry forward and done something great.
On the other hand, dismissing a technology just because he hasn’t figured out how to use it seems silly.
Source: GamesIndustry via Gamerzines.
