"Know where the box is, then think outside of it!"

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Project Fatal?

Project Natel is seeming to be the next big thing for Microsoft's xbox but me along with a few others have doubts over this technology and whether or not it is. After watching all the self praising videos on youtube, we see that the technology can recognise emotions, voices and sophisticated human movement. Getting big names on board such as Steven Speilberg, is a rather unique move, which easily makes the public believe this product is instantly amazing. Steven even mentions at the end that " Its not about reinventing the wheel, its about no wheel at all!", even though its a carbon copy of the Nintendo Wii and Sony's eyetoy merged together. 

Now here comes the criticism, replacing the pad is too radical and not a wise move. People like to hold something, even the Nintendo Wii has a remote. Complete interaction is just not engaging enough and somewhere between the human emotion of a person and the computer reading it, something is lost, something that no software yet! can pick up on and its called the mind. I could go into a whole back history of AI but my point is that there needs to be an in-between before we can totally let go of the controller. For instance, Sony at this years e3  showed a sneak peek of their new wand style controller, which is more sophisticated than the Wii remote and can emerge the player further into the game. 

Freedom/space is the big thing with the interactive games but this comes at a price, as some people, such as teenagers, cant always be playing these games down in the living room and are forced upstairs to there tiny rooms. Take myself for example, I am currently living in Univercity halls with barely enough room for most of my crap, let along have enough room to be smashing aces past mario! When watching the trailer for Porject Natal, you notice that it is family based, which is xbox now wants to target. However, this is selfish and greedy and could pay dear for Microsoft because while they are appealing to family's, traditional gamers will find other consoles, such as the Sony's PS3.

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