With all this hubbub over Steam, Final Fantasy, and DRM fails, I had almost forgotten about Microsoft’s Project Natal. Mindy Mount, Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division (whew), reminded the world that Natal is coming at the Jeffries Annual Global Technology Conference in NYC yesterday morning, and even confirmed a full lineup showcase at this year’s E3.
“During last year’s Tokyo Game Show, Microsoft published a list of developers “actively working” on Natal-based titles, which includes Bethesda, Electronic Arts, and Square-Enix. And as recently as January, the list has grown to over 70 percent of total game publishers worldwide.
“It’s part of the reason that we announced [Natal] as early as last summer so that we’d have time to get kits out and get the entire game developer community developing games for it.”
Mount also said the company expects to show gamers its full lineup of Natal games at this year’s E3 event in Los Angeles.
“As a history, Microsoft works very strong with third-party developers, so we’re hoping that we’re going to get some great titles from that,” she said. “You’ll be able to see more news about that this summer at E3. We’ll show you the full lineup.”
Speaking from personal experience, most motion control other than Wii hasn’t worked out that great. It’s either been completely ignored by developers, or implemented so poorly that players wish it had been. We’ve seen some recent examples of motion control done right, but until we have a clear demo of Natal working as a solid input to a real game (like Fable III), I’m hedging my bets.
