Old Discussion Thread for all 3 motion controllers [Archive] - Page 11

ShadowRunner

26-May-2010, 22:46

The $299 bundled price is fine IMO. $150 is a little steep for an addon but it is in effect practically a seperate and new console experience if you look at it that way and is cheaper than what you would expect of a new console launch. Wii launched at $250 and was sold out constantly for a year or so, people are willing to spend that sort of cash as long as it appeals to them.

It does seem that most sales will be through new people buying into the bundle, and this fits into the demographic natal will appeal to anyway.

I cant see it something im going to be interested in but as long as the software is there i can still see it selling in huge amounts to the non-gamer crowd at those prices. I suspect the people worying about the price are more core gamers looking at it as a supplement to there current gaming rather than a seperate experience, which is really what it is. Us lot are not the primary MS are going after.

The thing im woried about the most is wether MS is placing too much faith in it and as a consequence neglects us core gamers. Hope E3 proves otherwise. There does seem to be growing doubt about Natal and it could turn out to have been a much bigger risk for them to take than it looked previously. They have a lot to gain but if they put too many eggs in the Natal basket they have a lot of ground to lose also.

I bet MS are pissed at Pachter for his $50 random guess, its final pricing was always going to be a letdown after that. I think if it wasnt for his comments the current pices would have been more inline with our non-missled predictions and at very least wouldnt have come as any sort of supprise or great dissapointment.

patsu

26-May-2010, 23:03

I had a 100 euro limit.
And it seems to go over it they really need to convince me with software.

But i read on a other forum and they reckon that if natal can do excellent head tracking the price would be justified. The product they mentioned was TrackIR 5 which cost around $150 and it's only for head tracking. Natal can do full body tracking and its a free mic i heard.

MS may sell through all its Natal inventory even @ $150. They may not be able to make enough in such a short time. Some (most) units need to go into the bundled Arcade package. Some of us who complained about high price may cave in once the hype builds up.

I am pretty sure a lot of homebrew people are interested in say.. Google TV + Natal, PC/Mac + Natal kind of set up. If Sony hasn't taken away OtherOS, those PS3Linux users would buy one to muck around with Cell too ! ^_^

Rangers

26-May-2010, 23:38

http://www.edge-online.com/news/natal-to-cost-149-–-source

I've got to say that rumor is false.

If Move is $99 which includes a camera and a physical controller, is it feasible for Natal to be $149 for just the camera? Is the Natal camera that much more expensive?

If it's not false than wow, just wow.

And 299 for Arcade+Natal is also crazy. Presumably, all 360 SKU's will be Natal included (otherwise you split the userbase and risk ending up with a dead peripheral), so you're essentially doing a $100 rise this far into the generation? Elite for 399??

I have a really hard time believing this. If true it's terrible.

Rangers

26-May-2010, 23:40

I had a 100 euro limit.
And it seems to go over it they really need to convince me with software.

But i read on a other forum and they reckon that if natal can do excellent head tracking the price would be justified. The product they mentioned was TrackIR 5 which cost around $150 and it's only for head tracking. Natal can do full body tracking and its a free mic i heard.

Yeah but, this "trackIR 5" thing I'm sure gets nowhere near the sales volume Natal will get. Necessitating the higher price. If anything it sort of proves the point Natal should be much cheaper than 150.

Really just going to have to straight call bogus on this report. Guess we'll see at E3.

patsu

26-May-2010, 23:41

Natal is more than "just a camera". There is a circuit board, a power supply, a motorized tilt, 1 IR emitter, 1 IR camera and 1 HD camera.

That said, the rumor may certainly be unfounded. We'll know in a month or so.

Graham

26-May-2010, 23:42

Disappointing if true.

The $150 price isn't a shock, although they usually only overprice their lower volume accessories. However something about the $300 arcade feels a bit off.

I would see three possibilities if there is a $300 entry system with natal:

The elite gets natal too (in which case it's $400+?!)
The elite stays as-is
It's a single SKU at $300

I don't see the first happening. If so, it would literally be a console price relaunch. However there is precedent for Microsoft increasing their prices.
I don't see the second happening. This would lead to *way* too much market confusion and would send very mixed messages. Two systems, the same price but with totally different accessories. Plus I feel MS would be foolish to not bundle Natal with every system sold, and all suggestions are they will be doing that.
The third makes the most sense. However it wouldn't be an arcade anymore, which is why this doesn't really add up to me.

Personally I'd like to see a $100 or less standalone price and $250-300 slim bundle.

I'm not at all surprised (http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1409028&postcount=56) by the release date rumor.... :mrgreen: (Although I was reaching a bit :razz:)

Squilliam

27-May-2010, 00:35

RancidLunchmeat

27-May-2010, 00:36

Brad Grenz

27-May-2010, 01:02

The E3 showing needs to be mindblowing for $150 otherwise, bomba.

Although a 360slim + 120gb HDD + natal = $299 would sell stupid amounts in the fall but not sure if MS is that smart. They often do "wtf?" moments. Natal pricing might be one of them.

Rumor suggests no hard drive in the baseline $299 SKU. That's about what I expected would happen. No price drop this year, with the Natal bundled at current price points.

I also don't understand the idea of people putting limits on what they are willing to pay for an experience that they aren't aware of. Either Natal offers an experience you are willing to pay X dollars for, or it doesn't.

I don't see people running out to pay $150 for a camera that, at best, provides a slightly more refined version of what the PS Eye already can do at $40. If that's the real price I'd expect the gaming public at large to balk, like they did at the PSPgo's price. It would also confirm that MS has bought into their own hype about Natal to a very unhealthy degree. It's over-engineered with no clear benefit. They'll be dropping the price within months because no one wants to pay $150 for a glorified web cam and virtual dodgeball.

zed

27-May-2010, 01:18

I wonder if this is simply mind games to make people expect a higher price and then 'surprise' us with a lower price when they hop on stage at E3. They too have some control over the rumours so by surprising people with a lower price it can seem cheaper than had they expected that price all along.Wouldnt surprise me, this is often done in politics, squilliam, eg national are proposing to mine some conservation land, now what they really want is place X+Y+Z, but what they ask for is X+Y+Z + (great barrier island, coromandal).
The Ppl are up in arms, the government saiz, hey since we're so nice we'll remove great barrier island, coromandal (which they didnt want in the first place), the ppl are placated. One of the oldest tricks in the books.
Personally $150 isnt too much theyve gotta cover their costs, the thing is natal is unproven yet.
It could be released and bomb horribly, thus if they were selling at a lost they'ld be hit twice
#1 it bombed
#2 it lost them cash
this way at least #2 doesnt happen, Learning from nintendo :)

RancidLunchmeat

27-May-2010, 01:31

I don't see people running out to pay $150 for a camera that, at best, provides a slightly more refined version of what the PS Eye already can do at $40. .

If that's all it does, why would they need to do anything? Don't they already have a camera they could just release software for?

I must have missed where the gaming community at large went from thinking this was the best invention since sliced bread and was going to revolutionize everything to merely being a webcam.

Alucardx23

27-May-2010, 01:59

They must be talking about the new stuff Microsoft will show at E3. Microsoft is nuts for pricing Natal at $150 or they are pretty confident about what they got.

Criterion Games: ” Project Natal was Amazing and Sensational “

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/1111/20100526t3tb3bwsy92n47c.jpg

http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/6490/20100526eyjjmqs8b9idyw4.jpg

http://www.gamesthirst.com/2010/05/26/criterion-games-project-natal-was-amazing-and-sensational/

(((interference)))

27-May-2010, 02:12

Gosh, $150 after the downgrades too. The prototypes must have looked awfully expensive back then.

Yea, do you think they're still selling it at a loss or trying to make profit from accessory sales? It would be quite stupid if they were.

While i agree that its priced to high, im not so sure it will matter. All of MS accessories are over priced and they still seem to sell. People will buy this thing up due to the massive amount of advertising MS is going to be doing.

I disagree, none of the 360 owners I know have ever bought a 360 accessory other than controllers and the wireless racing wheel.

MS has an infuriating habit of eye-gouging for accessories like the ridiculous HDD or wireless adapter pricing. I sincerely hope they aren't going to shoot themselves in the foot and do the same with Natal, their goal should be to entice as many 360 owners as possible to upgrade to Natal.

Surely, the hardware can't cost $150 can it? Do we have anything similar to compare it to?

Also, with the bundles, we're probably going to see some sort of hardware/form factor revision for the Natal launch, which may the increase in prices easier to swallow.

obonicus

27-May-2010, 02:29

Does anyone know what PSEye cost at launch? Was it released alone or with the mat + stand + game + deck?

Rangers

27-May-2010, 02:39

Now MCV (http://www.mcvuk.com/news/39166/Natal-to-cost-149-change-name) is saying the 149 rumor is correct as well.

Really out of left field there.

Really have to wonder at MS strategy if this is true. Will they pack it in all SKU or no? Will they leave the current SKU's for the hardcore, and just introduce Natal+Arcade at 299? What about a Natal SKU with a hard drive? What about the fact the non-Natal SKU's (if indeed they remain) are long overdue for a price cut anyway? Natal will look even worse if the non Natal 360 prices drop to 149/249, as they should.

My gut says that this isn't true still. They come out at $69 or so at E3 and we laugh at this.

The only justification for this is if MS thinks demand will be really high.

patsu

27-May-2010, 02:39

NavNucST3

27-May-2010, 02:44

Does anyone know what PSEye cost at launch? Was it released alone or with the mat + stand + game + deck?

Memory is hazy but I believe I got mine at $80 packed in with the "It's o.k. if it takes 24+ hours to do a title update" game.

obonicus

27-May-2010, 02:46

Eye of Judgment + PS Eye was $70.

I think PSEye alone was $40.

The key differences are:
Sony treated PSEye like a one-off thing (just like PSP !). Microsoft sees Natal as its future platform.

Sony sells hardware, but MS sells software.

So I expect Natal to be packaged/perceived very differently from PSEye.

My question was mostly about the cost of the components. Accessories being accessories, Sony probably made money on the $70/$40 price-point. If you're suggesting that MS is trying to sell Natal as a loss-leader at $150, then did they put the dedicated processor back into it and no one found out?

patsu

27-May-2010, 02:57

I have no idea whether $150 is a loss to MS.

PSEye is an accessory. There is no official PSEye + PS3 bundle. Sony implemented EyeCreate, Video Chat, Eye of Judgment and a few PSN titles for it; then left it alone. I think EyeToy received more attention from Sony than PSEye (perhaps because of PS3's high price).

It is more fair to compare Playstation Move with Natal.

I still don't see a holistic approach/vision from Sony w.r.t. Playstation Move yet. e.g., Short of PS Move integration in individual titles, what is the final end user usage model ? Hopefully E3 will tell us more.

EDIT: Oh... and they did the awesome draw-my-own-Tank demo, but EyePet watered it down into something non-interesting.

EDIT 2: While it may sound expensive, I don't think $150 is overpriced w.r.t. the values Natal could fetch.

The mental exercise Sony marketing may ask themselves is: What can be done in Playstation Move that is worth $150 ? The BOM cost doesn't always determine the retail price.

Squilliam

27-May-2010, 08:00

*conspiracy theory* Personally $150 isnt too much theyve gotta cover their costs, the thing is natal is unproven yet.
It could be released and bomb horribly, thus if they were selling at a lost they'ld be hit twice
#1 it bombed
#2 it lost them cash
this way at least #2 doesnt happen, Learning from nintendo :)

Natal is unproven and they'd want to charge $150 for it? It doesn't quite make sense really. $150 is 3/4 the price of the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU! Charging that much makes #1 more likely! I really can't see them charging more than $99 for it and it does look kind of elegant coming in at $99 standalone, $199 Arcade and $299 Elite or thereabouts.

Shifty Geezer

27-May-2010, 09:06

I also don't understand the idea of people putting limits on what they are willing to pay for an experience that they aren't aware of. Either Natal offers an experience you are willing to pay X dollars for, or it doesn't.Indeed. Who'd buy $300 of GameCube hardware when you could have brand-spanking new XB360 hardware? Oh, hang on, this Wii thing is fun and worth the money...

If Natal is that good, people will buy it. And if there's high demand, it's better to price high initially then lose revenue. Existing XB360 owners don't have to worry about buying the console, so it's a matter of whether $150 provides a good experience or not. However, it'll have to be a damned good experience! And there is a psychological deterrent in the price that, even if the value if there, people will compare with alternative options ("But I can get x, y, z for $150!").

rabidrabbit

27-May-2010, 09:10

If the estimates were to be true, I don't get how it's such a big deal. How much did that Wii fit balance board thing cost? Or the Tony Hawk skateboard thing?

Weren't they all $100+? So you figure, $100 bundle cost, and a premium bump in price to screw current customers who don't need to buy new consoles because that's how business works.

I also don't understand the idea of people putting limits on what they are willing to pay for an experience that they aren't aware of. Either Natal offers an experience you are willing to pay X dollars for, or it doesn't.

Considering nobody knows what that final experience will be, the idea that people are so willing to put a price tag on that unknown is puzzling.

As Patsu said, if Natal can become an alternative to a controller and a remote and can integrate with things like Netflix and google TV, and become a new way people use their entertainment devices, it'll be worth the price. Hell, have you seen how much some of those Logitech universal remotes cost?
Yeah, we did pay $600-$700 for the "promise" of some vague future PS3 experience ;)

Anyway, $150 is a bit too much as it is "just" a camera.
I mean, people already have an idea of what a camera periperal costs, and what it can do.

At least current showings of what Natal gaming is, in my opinion, does not quite justify a $100 extra on PSEye or that old xbox360 camera.

Casual gamers might view the price differently: "If Wii motion control and PS3 motion control cost less than half as much, why should I pay three times as much for the xbox360 version of motion contrl? Does it give me that much more... wait, it's just a camera, with Wii and PS3 I get more hardware... so they must be better value"

(((interference)))

27-May-2010, 11:18

Yeah, we did pay $600-$700 for the "promise" of some vague future PS3 experience ;)

Anyway, $150 is a bit too much as it is "just" a camera.
I mean, people already have an idea of what a camera periperal costs, and what it can do.

At least current showings of what Natal gaming is, in my opinion, does not quite justify a $100 extra on PSEye or that old xbox360 camera.

Casual gamers might view the price differently: "If Wii motion control and PS3 motion control cost less than half as much, why should I pay three times as much for the xbox360 version of motion contrl? Does it give me that much more... wait, it's just a camera, with Wii and PS3 I get more hardware... so they must be better value"

But paying that much for the 'future PS3 experience' could be justified at the time by the status of the Playstation brand, the Cell hoo-ha and all the 'realtime' tech demos.

Here, Microsoft is competing with the Move and the firmly established Wii, it doesn't have a track record in motion controls or casual games (or even hardware reliability/quality) and it's arriving near the end of the console lifecycle.

If MS really wants it to be the game changer they proclaim it to be - why are they pricing it out of the market?

It makes no sense - I mean on the one hand you have devs like Joker talking about how much effort and focus MS is pouring into Natal (unlike the Move, which Sony is treating as a side project) and then it seems like they're going to sabotage it's success by trying to make a quick buck on the accessory like with all other overpriced HDDs and adapters they sell.

Look at it from your traditional 360 gamer's perspective - an audience which Natal should see significant uptake in if it's going to gain any traction. I mean it's hardly likely that we'll see a huge casual segment just going to appear and buy Natal en masse like they did with the Wii and MS would be quite naive to think so.

A 360 core gamer would possibly buy Natal if it was say $50-100 - it might be fun with friends over or add some nifty gimmickry to core titles, but $150? Thats 3 new games, I don't think many existing 360 owners are going to jump in - the price is just too prohibitive - especially when the Move is much cheaper with similar functionality and more core gamer appeal (ie.works well with shooters, has a camera and a physical controller with buttons). 360 owners will just think MS is ripping them off again.

MS needs a significant percentage of the existing 360 userbase to buy into Natal and convert their non-360 owning friends AND to also provide impetus for devs to create Natal titles.

For Natal to suceed - it needs to flourish, it can't just be something MS keeps on life support - like 360 camera or Home on PS3. They need to get it into as many hands as possible - the Wii's success is about half due to it's revolutionary controls and half to it's low price - MS would be stupid not to realise that.

rabidrabbit

27-May-2010, 12:32

For Natal to take off at that price, they really need the "killer app"

Balance board had Wii fit (though that got old real quick, imo, and there's not much else that supports it, but it was new and appealing then. Nothing else like existed in the market.

We'll see at E3 what MS has for Natal, until then I remain very sceptical.

Shifty Geezer

27-May-2010, 14:24

You know, the killer app is going to have to be insanely killer. EyeToy had that killer app that wowed people and was the first major breakthrough in Mum-and-Granny family gaming. It sold to less than 10% of the install base in the end (although I guess more than that in Europe where it was virtually isolated to). Motion gaming of that ilk won't be as ground-breaking as EyeToy was, with a peripheral that costs a heck of a lot more. Adoption in those circumstances must be expected to be low (under 10%). To get significant adoption and actual create a viable platform, MS will need lots of buyers, which will need some outstanding, world-changing software. I hope they're well prepared for E3!

Alkohallick

27-May-2010, 15:53

Yea, do you think they're still selling it at a loss or trying to make profit from accessory sales? It would be quite stupid if they were.

I disagree, none of the 360 owners I know have ever bought a 360 accessory other than controllers and the wireless racing wheel.

MS has an infuriating habit of eye-gouging for accessories like the ridiculous HDD or wireless adapter pricing. I sincerely hope they aren't going to shoot themselves in the foot and do the same with Natal, their goal should be to entice as many 360 owners as possible to upgrade to Natal.

Surely, the hardware can't cost $150 can it? Do we have anything similar to compare it to?

Also, with the bundles, we're probably going to see some sort of hardware/form factor revision for the Natal launch, which may the increase in prices easier to swallow.

Yeah but thats you, even though there are no numbers out to quote, I'm almost positive that despite the high prices the masses have bought MS accessories by the dozens. Don't forget that uninformed moms and dads will buy jr almost anything at any price to keep him happy.

On another note -I think with the recent (past 4-5 years) high prices in the gaming industry the masses (read-not you and me)have come to expect prices to be high and don't mind paying for that enjoyment.

zed

27-May-2010, 20:38

Natal is unproven and they'd want to charge $150 for it? It doesn't quite make sense really. $150 is 3/4 the price of the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU! Charging that much makes #1 more likely! I really can't see them charging more than $99 for it and it does look kind of elegant coming in at $99 standalone, $199 Arcade and $299 Elite or thereabouts.
conspiracy theory (well Ive bookmarked this post) to announce when national does do what I say that somehow of other the conspiracy came true!!!
Sure the higher the price the more likely it will bomb, but selling under what it costs to make is guaranteed to lose money for MS everytime, I think shifty said look at the wii, it was (+ still is) overpriced but sold gangbusters, if its attractive enuf ppl will buy it price is only a minor consideration

Alucardx23

27-May-2010, 20:57

Natal To Be Christened 'Wave' At E3?

NowGamer has learnt from a source close to Microsoft that the official name for Project Natal will be revealed as 'Wave'.

http://xbox-360.nowgamer.com/news/3284/natal-to-be-christened-wave-at-e3

rabidrabbit

27-May-2010, 21:32

Good then the Move wasn't named Arc, as rumoured earlier.
Wave and Arc, they'd been too similar.
Move and Wave are kinda similar too.

Don't like the name, Wave doesn't really say nothing about the device or it's functionality. I think Natal would be better as a kind of "abstract" name.

liolio

27-May-2010, 21:44

Wave? After the price another wtf moment for MS

Shifty Geezer

27-May-2010, 22:02

Doesnt sound too bad. Wave as in 'new wave' the latest fad, and wave as in a happy greeting. They would have been better off with Move but Sony nabbed that!

RobertR1

27-May-2010, 22:26

Natal is a better name. Unique and easily associated to the product.

patsu

27-May-2010, 22:30

IMHO, on hindsight, Wii has the best name even though we had fun laughing at it. Move and Wave sound (too) generic.

dragonelite

27-May-2010, 22:43

What everybody is now familiar with the name natal..
Not sure if microsoft is trolling with us first to high price point and now stupid name.:roll:

I think i will wave natal goodbye.:sad:

RancidLunchmeat

27-May-2010, 23:10

What everybody is now familiar with the name natal..
Not sure if microsoft is trolling with us first to high price point and now stupid name.:roll:

I think i will wave natal goodbye.:sad:

IMO, that comment shows exactly why the majority of comments on here (and elsewhere) are always wrong.

Just as we were all wrong about the ridiculousness of the Wii name after "everybody" loved the name Revolution.

In fact, the people who have even heard of Natal at this point (or the Revolution back in the day) are a very small minority of the end consumers who will purchase the product. What percentage of people who own a Wii (or bought one for their kids or grandkids, etc) ever knew it had a code-name of Revolution?

Wave actually makes sense, not only in terms of "new wave", "wave of the future", etc.. but also in terms of how you are physically going to use it to interact with your electronic devices. You do so with a friendly wave at the screen, not an angry button push or a overly exaggerated mimed effort like in the Wii commercials, but a nice friendly little wave.

As far as the killer app this needs to justify the price, it better not just be one. It better be across the board interaction into all of MS's titles.

I'm still not understanding the disconnect with what MS is attempting, the rumored price point, and the staunch opposition in this thread. Everybody seems to take it at face value that MS is making a huge investment in Natal and that developers across the board are doing so as well, compared to Sony's Move which really seems to be a "Me too" without near the capital investment. Additionally, the press on how natal performs has been nothing short of spectacular on an almost unanimous level since it was first demonstrated up until as recently as today. Yet, knowing all these things, there's still a firm belief that natal won't produce an experience worth $150?

As Rabbit said, to people who spent $700 for a PS3? Or as Shifty said, to people who spent $300 for gamecube quality tech?

I'm still not following the logic here.

NavNucST3

28-May-2010, 00:02

...

As Rabbit said, to people who spent $700 for a PS3? Or as Shifty said, to people who spent $300 for gamecube quality tech?

I'm still not following the logic here.

I don't understand why this is hard for you to grasp. You really don't believe that people have price sensitivity at all? You can't produce a single thought experiment where someone is not willing to purchase something at a given price even though you used a variable in your original post?

The PS3 was NOT worth $600 to me since I had a 360.
The PS3 WAS worth $400 to me even though I had a 360.

The Wii was not worth RE-purchasing at $250 since I had a 360 and PS3.
The Wii was worth re-purchasing at $175 ($25 gift card) even though I had a 360 and PS3.

"Natal" is not worth purchasing at $150 (x2) since I have a 360, PS3 and Wii.
"Natal" is worth purchasing to me at $100 (x2).

dragonelite

28-May-2010, 00:21

The brand natal is already pretty common even by the casuals i believe it was already showed on the tonight show. They already build momentum with the natal name why not keep that momentum going.The crowd already got a lot of exposure with natal and the 14th the are going to stream/air a Natal show with circus de soleil.

And revolution name for the wii was more of a industry insider thing i believe never heard of it on television only in some game magazines.

We shall see how microsoft is doing with natal at the end of this gen.
Both motion controllers all depend on software support if the software is there the hardware will sell just like the consoles.

RancidLunchmeat

28-May-2010, 00:32

"Natal" is not worth purchasing at $150 (x2) since I have a 360, PS3 and Wii.
"Natal" is worth purchasing to me at $100 (x2).

How do you know if you don't know what it does?

Squilliam

28-May-2010, 00:33

conspiracy theory (well Ive bookmarked this post) to announce when national does do what I say that somehow of other the conspiracy came true!!!
Sure the higher the price the more likely it will bomb, but selling under what it costs to make is guaranteed to lose money for MS everytime, I think shifty said look at the wii, it was (+ still is) overpriced but sold gangbusters, if its attractive enuf ppl will buy it price is only a minor consideration

Hey! I shortened it because it was off topic! I've already had a warning by the most evil and ungracious, heartless, terrible and wickedly intelligent mod on this forum and I was hoping to avoid a repeat! :-D

In any case it could also be they are sending a message to the market that this is a premium product by the pricing OR it could be they are playing mindgames with the early adopters who are paying attention by making it seem expensive before showing off a lower price.

Lets say it costs $80 to make and package/ship. They put on a 50% markup which bring it up to $120 cost to the retailer who then slaps on a 25% markup which balances out the rest. I guess that makes sense if both are making decent money on the accessory. If they simply want to break even then that $80 product becomes $100, quite the difference in the end.

So it really does depend on how they figure it at their end. There are different price signals which work on the minds of the consumers. If they price it higher then it CAN be perceived as a higher quality product or if they price it low some people may perceive the value of the product to be lower. With the American market they can have the best of both worlds in that sales/black friday especially allow them to target the more price conscious people with a one day special.

The biggest factor in whether it will sell for $150 is the experience offered and whether the thing actually works as advertised. People are far less tolerant to teething problems as the price of the goods bought increases. The thing is, it would have to be likely sold for less in the EU because Microsoft haven't developed their marketplace and video on demand services there so the possible utility of it is lower. The Wii's earliest system sellers worked pretty much perfectly so thats the key to Natal really.

obonicus

28-May-2010, 00:34

Maybe there'll be some confusion, but it won't be the difference between success and failure for MS's product. If it's successful, people will get used to it like they did with the Wii.

RancidLunchmeat

28-May-2010, 00:34

(((interference)))

28-May-2010, 00:58

Yeah but thats you, even though there are no numbers out to quote, I'm almost positive that despite the high prices the masses have bought MS accessories by the dozens. Don't forget that uninformed moms and dads will buy jr almost anything at any price to keep him happy.

On another note -I think with the recent (past 4-5 years) high prices in the gaming industry the masses (read-not you and me)have come to expect prices to be high and don't mind paying for that enjoyment.

I don't know if mums and dads are going to spend $150 on some accessory, that's 3 new release games.

And I think most of the 360 demographic aren't kids and probably spend their own money on games.

Plus, we still have no idea how reliable Natal is, recent reports and demos have shown that there are still problems. The last thing MS want's is another RROD style hardware reliability problem - no one will want to buy a buggy 150 camera.

You know, the killer app is going to have to be insanely killer. EyeToy had that killer app that wowed people and was the first major breakthrough in Mum-and-Granny family gaming. It sold to less than 10% of the install base in the end (although I guess more than that in Europe where it was virtually isolated to). Motion gaming of that ilk won't be as ground-breaking as EyeToy was, with a peripheral that costs a heck of a lot more. Adoption in those circumstances must be expected to be low (under 10%). To get significant adoption and actual create a viable platform, MS will need lots of buyers, which will need some outstanding, world-changing software. I hope they're well prepared for E3!

Exactly, and unlike the PS3's more casual friendly European userbase, MS's audience is largely US core-gamer based.

What they show at E3 will show us if they have what it takes. I'm just not sure that launch titles will be groundbreaking enough to entice 360 owners to buy a 150 accessory, perhaps down the road we'll get the insanely killer app it needs. But at launch, MS should be focused on getting the hardware into the hands of as many people as possible - not trying to make some quick buck. It's the whole short term - long term success trade off. If Natal see's significant uptake it'll just encourage more devs to create Natal titles and improve the quantity/quality of Natal games which will draw in more buyers.

I also don't mind the name Wave, it's not as good as Move (which would suit Natal better than the PS3 motion controller) and it reminds me of the completely unrelated Google Wave, but it's better than Natal (or Wii for that matter) which would be a rather obscure name - "so, it means birth in Latin? and it's a motion controller?"

AzBat

28-May-2010, 01:14

Personally I'm unsure if I would buy it at $150. That's a steep price for an add-on. The experience & the games would have to be beyond cool. What little games they've shown with it so far, I would have to say it's not worth it. However, I do understand that they really haven't shown what it can do. Plus, they haven't really shown how the facial recognition works or the microphone and voice recognition. There's a lot of potential there, but I'm not sure it's $150 worth. $100 or less and I would have bought it no questions. But like somebody said that extra $50 is something I could spend on a full disc-bsaed game. Or I could use it to buy Live Arcade, Live Indie or Game Room games. I would probably get a lot more use out of that instead. Personally I don't think I've ever spent more than $70 on any one item for my 360(except that Batman: AA Collector's Edition). Closest things would have been Guitar Hero 2 with the wired controller and my Logitech Harmony 360 Remote. Until I see it in action I'm more tempted to save that $150 & spend it on a Wii system when it drops in price.

As for the name, I'm glad cooler heads at Microsoft have prevailed and decided to give it an actual marketable name. Yes, they have a _little_ recognition & exposure for Natal, but in the end it's a foreign word that I and a lot of people I know have never heard of. So I'm glad they're changing it. However, I'm not sure about the name Wave. At first it sounds bland, but I understand why it would be chosen. I see inspiration from "doing the wave". That's a lot of fun at sporting events. I also see how if you could 'wave' at the camera to log in. "new wave", etc, etc. Unfortunately it looks too much like they took "Wii" and "Move" and combined them together. Either way, I think if it's a success, I don't think anybody will care what it's called. They will forget it about just like people did with Wii.

BTW, I also think that an Arcade model with no hard drive and Wave for $300 is insane. That pretty much confirms to me that Microsoft is not price dropping the price on current SKUs whatsoever. I think Microsoft are fooling themselves into thinking that they should treat this whole launch like it was another new system launch.

Come E3 I'm either going to say I was right or I'll be sipping the Kool-Aid. Right now I'm leaning more to the former.

Tommy McClain

AzBat

28-May-2010, 01:17

Clearly if they are making a name change, they need to do it before they pay big money to circus de soleil to promote it as natal.

One would think that they will be promoting it as whatever they decide instead of Natal. There just using that as a placeholder since they want to announce the name at the event, not 2 months beforehand.

Tommy McClain

obonicus

28-May-2010, 02:17

It might be a leak. But then again Move was 'Wand' and 'Arc' to forumers for a little while, too.

Rangers

28-May-2010, 04:40

Brad Grenz

28-May-2010, 05:29

I've heard from another insider that has seen Natal that it's really amazing. It can do skeletal recognition, and recognition of other objects. For example he said, if you put Natal on a predator drone and Bin Laden's skeletal info in, it could detect him out of a crowd. I'm sure it's not that advanced, but that's the idea.

But he also said he's not sure if the amazing tech applies well to videogames.

Pshaw. I've seen Chloe O'Brien do that on hundreds of traffic cameras simultaneously. Biometric facial recognition isn't actually that interesting. Any camera can do it, provided you've written the software. And lots of people have written the software.

rabidrabbit

28-May-2010, 06:25

How do you know if you don't know what it does?
Exactly. We really don't know what Wave does. There's only been the closed room demos (that have shown lag, and an unimpressive ricochet demo. Milo really doesn't even count). Nothing shown yet justify the $150 price tag (imo), so we'd be paying for the "promise", just like with PS3 when it launched.
With PS3 that promise has largery been fulfilled, but see where that price tag left Sony, at second place.

_phil_

28-May-2010, 07:56

I've heard from another insider that has seen Natal that it's really amazing. It can do skeletal recognition, and recognition of other objects. For example he said, if you put Natal on a predator drone and Bin Laden's skeletal info in, it could detect him out of a crowd. I'm sure it's not that advanced, but that's the idea.

But he also said he's not sure if the amazing tech applies well to videogames.

Yeah ,sure...
Beyond 5-6 metters Natal is depth blind ,and out of enough precision before that.
And from what we saw it has a lot troubles tracking a kid at 3m.
If they had to count on this to find BinLaden ,the WOT(tm) wouldn't be over any time soon.

Shifty Geezer

28-May-2010, 10:20

I don't understand why this is hard for you to grasp. You really don't believe that people have price sensitivity at all?Sure, but at the moment people are citing the technical aspects of Natal as unjustified - "It's not worth $150 because it's a couple of cameras." The same argument can be presented for Wii - "it's not worth $200 because it's just a $40 GC, and XB360 is much better value." If this is all consumers were presented with, I doubt many would have bought Wii. However, they were presented with different experiences, and it's there the value proposition comes into effect. The products have a degree of appeal that potential shoppers have to weigh up against its cost. Is this experience worth this price? At the moment we don't know what Natal/Wave's experience is. I hope! If the experience is limb-waggling breakout, it's certainly not worth $150! But if it offers some world-changing experience as yet unshown, it may be people look at the price and think, "it's steep, but man I've gotta have this!" and shell out.

Cyan

28-May-2010, 12:45

It might be a leak. But then again Move was 'Wand' and 'Arc' to forumers for a little while, too.
Wave is quite similar to Move which is a better option than Arc or Wand -although this one was decent-.

They could call it Microwave so they would have part of the company's name in there.

Wiiwave wouldn't be a bad idea, too, given the success of the Wii -but maybe Nintendo would get angry-.

Prophecy2k

28-May-2010, 13:28

I really cannot concieve in my mind, any kind of world changing experience that Natal could provide that would make it worth a $150 price tag to me...

Even if the tech was super-uber precise at tracking twelve people all at once at 120fps down to sub pixel accuracy. I'm just not convinced that beyond the most resourceful, genius and lateral thinking developers, the majority will put out anything other than unimpressive, unfun, hand-waving simulators and fitness appz.

Controller-less gaming for me is too restrictive in the kind of game-types that would work with it. Why throw away years and years of very well developed gaming types and genres and contrain your platform to a very narrow selection, then tell your developers to "think outside the box" and "make up new ones"... On top of that you then slap a $150 price tag on your platform and expect the devs to come up with "SUPER AWESOME ULTRA UNIQUE" ideas to make your platform worth the price your asking for it.... i can't see it working to be honest...

Even from a consumer perspective. I'd be much more likely to pay $150 for a Sony Move or Wii & M+ because i can be sure that i won't be forfeiting my opportunity to play the game types and genres i know and love, as well as new, cool and interesting MC game experiences.

At the moment, provided the rumoured price is correct, Natal even with a few awesome new experieces with it's launch games would need to cost less than 2/3 of the console to be worth it to the majority who own a 360.

If MS are looking primarily at using Natal to sell to new non-360 owners then that's great for them. But why put up such a high barrier to entry for exisiting 360 owners who would be interested in the device, and so limiting the potential installed base, which in turn then limits the platform's attractiveness to most game devs?

Tbh... i'm expecting a few quirky cool launch games for Natal, which later every other dev will clone to make a quick buck on it. It certainly won't be the "overall" exciting new experience that MS is purporting it to be (IMHO).

NavNucST3

28-May-2010, 15:44

Sure, but at the moment people are citing the technical aspects of Natal as unjustified - "It's not worth $150 because it's a couple of cameras." The same argument can be presented for Wii - "it's not worth $200 because it's just a $40 GC, and XB360 is much better value." If this is all consumers were presented with, I doubt many would have bought Wii. However, they were presented with different experiences, and it's there the value proposition comes into effect. The products have a degree of appeal that potential shoppers have to weigh up against its cost. Is this experience worth this price? At the moment we don't know what Natal/Wave's experience is. I hope! If the experience is limb-waggling breakout, it's certainly not worth $150! But if it offers some world-changing experience as yet unshown, it may be people look at the price and think, "it's steep, but man I've gotta have this!" and shell out.

I think you are overlapping your consumer here, to be $150 you have to already have a 360 otherwise it is $300+ (based wholly on rumored pricing). The Wii argument is fallacious considering how many units the GameCube sold and how many the Wii has sold and it also proved that the Wii WAS the better value given how many units it continues to sell; there was no me-too aspect when the Wii launched. What you and Rancid are saying is that "we" are delusional to think that the market that has already purchase a Wii is now primed to drop $300 on a 360++ or you are saying that there is still an untapped mass of consumers that has so far shunned the 360 AND Wii that is primed to purchase the 360++ en masse and with that, I do not concur.

I am under no delusion that my gaming expenditures are considered the norm.

Shifty Geezer

28-May-2010, 17:39

I think you are overlapping your consumer here, to be $150 you have to already have a 360 otherwise it is $300+ (based wholly on rumored pricing). The Wii argument is fallacious considering how many units the GameCube sold and how many the Wii has sold and it also proved that the Wii WAS the better value given how many units it continues to sell; there was no me-too aspect when the Wii launched. What you and Rancid are saying is that "we" are delusional to think that the market that has already purchase a Wii is now primed to drop $300 on a 360++ or you are saying that there is still an untapped mass of consumers that has so far shunned the 360 AND Wii that is primed to purchase the 360++ en masse and with that, I do not concur. I'm not saying anything of the sort, nor saying that anyone's delusional. I don't know how you're reading that.

Okay, question : what does an XB360 user get when they buy a $150 Natal/Wave peripheral?

patsu

28-May-2010, 19:02

Pshaw. I've seen Chloe O'Brien do that on hundreds of traffic cameras simultaneously. Biometric facial recognition isn't actually that interesting. Any camera can do it, provided you've written the software. And lots of people have written the software.

Yap ! But Sony and Nintendo have not rolled out controller-free applications in a big way since EyeToy. So the field is still wide open for Microsoft to take. ^_^

Yeah ,sure...
Beyond 5-6 metters Natal is depth blind ,and out of enough precision before that.
And from what we saw it has a lot troubles tracking a kid at 3m.
If they had to count on this to find BinLaden ,the WOT(tm) wouldn't be over any time soon.

I think within the tech limit, MS can do very cool things with Natal. They only need one jackpot.

dragonelite

29-May-2010, 23:25

Really god dam hate the pre E3 rumor shit.
Natal is priced for 80 euro at a dutch online retailer i just saw on neogaf.
Natal'wave' likes to change its price all the time from sub 70 to 120 to 80 euro
http://i47.tinypic.com/2ccpcw0.png

Rangers

30-May-2010, 00:15

Doesn't mean the website is any more reliable than the previous $149 rumor though.

Hopefully Natal will be a lot more like $80 though. I think it is.

Shifty Geezer

30-May-2010, 09:26

€80, ~$100. Is that website typically selling around RRP or heavily discounted?

Squilliam

30-May-2010, 09:59

€80, ~$100. Is that website typically selling around RRP or heavily discounted?

What happened to Euro = Dollar? Hasn't the Euro fallen relatively speaking due to their crisis of confidence so therefore the old rule of the thumb would be more applicable?

If 1E = $1.2 then surely 1E incl VAT = $1 + applicable tax?

Shifty Geezer

30-May-2010, 10:09

Good point. I was going by exchange rate. I suppose that €80 price will also be including VAT, meaning the actual price is less, so yeah, $100 is probably more accurate.

Arwin

30-May-2010, 10:21

It's not impossible that Microsoft will price Natal more aggressively in Europe, as the 360 is much weaker there than in the U.S., and even more so in the 'casual' market.

I'm personally going to hold off speculation until after E3. In the end the price is a factor of production versus expected sales as well as competition.

Shifty Geezer

30-May-2010, 10:48

I'm personally going to hold off speculation until after E3.But then it won't be speculation! :p

Arwin

30-May-2010, 11:01

But then it won't be speculation! :p

But that's speculating that they'll actually announce the price at E3 ... :razz:

Of course it's not unlikely that they'll do just that, but the final price at launch is what counts.

Squilliam

30-May-2010, 11:50

Good point. I was going by exchange rate. I suppose that €80 price will also be including VAT, meaning the actual price is less, so yeah, $100 is probably more accurate.

But its 67 Euro before VAT and once you factor in the exchange rate it comes out at $82.62 assuming the VAT rate is 19% like this calculator suggests. Since Americans apply their sales tax to the price the list prices ought to be E = $.

dragonelite

30-May-2010, 12:23

€80, ~$100. Is that website typically selling around RRP or heavily discounted?

Its more of the expensive online retailers mostly selling around recommend retailer price. When we get closer to launch im sure i can find it closer to 70 or maybe even lower if i import it from the uk which a lot of online dutch retailers do it's way cheaper.:roll:

aselto

30-May-2010, 12:39

This whole Natal thingy fascinates me quite a bit, more precisely Microsoft's shift towards casual market. On one hand they are doing quite in the traditional gaming area, but apparently decided to leave the market almost entirely to 3rd parties and (to a degree) Sony, with only milking their traditionally big franchises. It's somewhat understandable as years of trying to catering to various audiences within traditional gaming have been met usually with little to none success (eg. failure of Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon along with moneyhatted 3rd party JRPGs) and even their recent outing - Alan Wake - got squashed in sales by RDR. Their biggest success stories - Halo and Gears of War - happened when they created a market for these types of games (on consoles at least).

In this light it's quite obvious why Microsoft want to go away from arms race with 3rd parties and Sony and would rather try to deliver new experiences for completely untapped audience, or at least tapped only by Nintendo. The interesting thing will be if they actually have something beyond Wii Sports and Wii Fit clones - the Milo demo makes me actually hopeful that they do have interesting concepts in works. If Natal software is Wii-Too only, then MS might squeeze themselves out of the market, because that definitely won't sway anyone (regardless of price), while Sony slowly bites into the marketshare on the traditional market, with PS3 pushing more software in last year than 360. We'll see in two weeks, I guess.

Rangers

30-May-2010, 12:54

aselto

30-May-2010, 13:11

egoless

31-May-2010, 15:25

This whole Natal thingy fascinates me quite a bit, more precisely Microsoft's shift towards casual market.

It's no different from any previous generation. They start hardcore, and go casual at the end with peripherals being part of going casual. Nintendo simply flipped the script, which is why there has been such a cry for this E3 to be a hardcore proving ground for them.

On one hand they are doing quite in the traditional gaming area, but apparently decided to leave the market almost entirely to 3rd parties and (to a degree) Sony, with only milking their traditionally big franchises.

Which is simply Microsoft following the PS2 script don't you think? Not a bad idea considering that kept Sony afloat for quite some time.

In this light it's quite obvious why Microsoft want to go away from arms race with 3rd parties and Sony and would rather try to deliver new experiences for completely untapped audience, or at least tapped only by Nintendo.

Again, no different from previous generations. They're not abandoning anything, but laying the groundwork for extending their current console's lifecycle and making sure to CLEARLY (as in the consumer has a reference point that's certainly not wii) address both markets in their next hardware.

patsu

31-May-2010, 16:25

But Sony is also trying to capture the casual market with Move.

Sometimes I wonder if it's worth bothering. Wii's share versus the hardcore twins has been falling for a while now. It appears to me the "hardcore" market was inevitably overtaking the casual one anyway. Maybe they would have been better off concentrating on hardware price drops.

I think the market has changed a little. A large part of casuals/non-gamers seem to have moved to web games (at least observing my family members and friends) or even phone and iPad titles. I am somewhat concerned by this because IMHO those games have very poor UI (many don't have pause/resume), and most are unimaginative (but highly addictive). iPad games may be too inexpensive (and may curb innovation in the long run, if priced too cheaply). Afraid devs may have charged in to claim share without thinking too much about long term, like during dotcom boom days.

To truly capture the casual market, Sony may have to tap more on Sony Online Entertainment, and web integration. Natal is special in the sense that it can go beyond gaming, especially in public areas. Move is purely a gaming thing. So Sony needs to be very very careful in planning and executing it so that it can have the intended effect on consumers at large.

AzBat

01-Jun-2010, 02:22

Looks like one Natal has been leaked...

Brunswick Pro Bowling. Seems to be a modified version of the PS Move version announced at GDC.

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2010/05/28/brunswick-pro-bowling-getting-natal-support/

Tommy McClain

Rangers

01-Jun-2010, 13:47

Sony seems a lot less agressive with Move though, and seem to be marketing it as the most precise motion controller, which doesn't exactly scream likea sure bet.

Looking at this (http://www.develop100.com/), certainly overall sales of hardcore titles are far greater than those of casual ones, at leastin the retail space. However, recent success of Just Dance shows that there's a lot of money lieing on the table as long as you come up with new ideas. Ongoing great sales of Wii also prove that it's worth it.

To flesh out this point some more, this week's UK chart

01 (01) 360 Red Dead Redemption (Take 2)
02 (02) PS3 Red Dead Redemption (Take 2)
03 (__) PS3 Ufc 2010: Undisputed (Thq)
04 (__) 360 Ufc 2010: Undisputed (Thq)
05 (03) WII Just Dance (Ubisoft)
06 (04) WII Wii Fit Plus (Nintendo)
07 (06) PS3 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa (Electronic Arts)
08 (08) 360 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa (Electronic Arts)
09 (09) WII Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo)
10 (07) PS3 Modnation Racers (Sony Computer Ent.)
11 (12) 360 Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision Blizzard)
12 (05) 360 Alan Wake (Microsoft)
13 (10) 360 Lost Planet 2 (Capcom)
14 (11) 360 Split/second: Velocity (Disney Interactive Studios)
15 (23) 360 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction (Ubisoft)
16 (__) 360 Blur (Activision Blizzard)
17 (19) 360 Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
18 (14) PS3 Split/second: Velocity (Disney Interactive Studios)
19 (16) PS3 Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
20 (17) 360 Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Electronic Arts)
21 (__) 360 Alpha Protocol (Sega)
22 (18) PS3 Lost Planet 2 (Capcom)
23 (21) WII New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo)
24 (__) PS3 Alpha Protocol (Sega)
25 (15) PS3 Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Electronic Arts)
26 (20) PS3 Grand Theft Auto Episodes - Liberty City (Take 2)
27 (13) 360 Skate 3 (Electronic Arts)
28 (22) 360 Forza Motorsport 3 (Microsoft)
29 (24) NDS Pokemon Soulsilver (Nintendo)
30 (32) PS3 Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision Blizzard)
31 (29) NDS New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo)
32 (__) PS3 Blur (Activision Blizzard)
33 (26) NDS Pokemon Heartgold (Nintendo)
34 (27) 360 Final Fantasy Xiii (Square Enix Europe)
35 (31) WII Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo)
36 (__) 360 Super Street Fighter Iv (Capcom)
37 (33) PS3 Super Street Fighter Iv (Capcom)
38 (__) PC Football Manager 2010 (Sega)
39 (37) 360 Just Cause 2 (Square Enix Europe)
40 (__) 360 Lego Batman: The Videogame (Warner Bros. Interactive)

There's 18 360 games, 13 PS3 games (31 combined HD games), and wait for it, FIVE Wii games.

Sure Wii is selling a lot of hardware (though even that has/is declining), but do you really want to sell more hardware when it's a loss leader, as PS3/360 is, basically?

Hell maybe that's what's behind the seeming high price of Natal. Maybe MS is banking on the hardware to bring the profits, not the software.

obonicus

01-Jun-2010, 14:33

If it really is ~$150, I think it definitely won't be a loss-leader, but it does seem like a shift in MS' strategy with regard to 'Natal as a platform/console relaunch'.

Gerry

01-Jun-2010, 15:27

07 (06) PS3 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa (Electronic Arts)
08 (08) 360 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa (Electronic Arts)
09 (09) WII Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo)

OT: But I do have to laugh at the fact that the Skype add-in turns the Fifa entry into a clickable (UK) phone number - 0808 360 2010.

patsu

01-Jun-2010, 16:36

To flesh out this point some more, this week's UK chart

There's 18 360 games, 13 PS3 games (31 combined HD games), and wait for it, FIVE Wii games.

Sure Wii is selling a lot of hardware (though even that has/is declining), but do you really want to sell more hardware when it's a loss leader, as PS3/360 is, basically?

According to Kaz, PS3 can break even if the users buy one more peripheral ? 360 should be more profitable hardware-wise than PS3.

The cumulative sales of WiiSports and a few other Wii titles should be big enough to justify for casual market development regardless of how well HD titles are doing.

This is especially true when the HD consoles have already developed their "roots" in the hardcore market today. Extending to casual is a natural next step.

patsu

02-Jun-2010, 01:13

A very positive impression of Natal:
http://www.joe.ie/002246/1/1/story/project-natal-a-first-glimpse

Responsive

My Ricochet avatar was incredibly responsive. Any pose, any movement, anything, was recreated instantly on screen. Even jumping on the spot or twisting my upper body saw the avatar doing so too. Bending my knees, inverting them inwards or clapping my hands was again perfectly reiterated by my avatar. No lag, no delay and no thinking.

...

After our two rounds we were introduced to a two player sequence where literally another player can jump in and join you in the Ricochet red ball tunnel instantaneously. The two player experience was actually quite fun and there was no let up in responsiveness or just how interactive it all felt.

patsu

02-Jun-2010, 04:05

Cohort Studios' Lol Scragg talks Move title "The Shoot":
http://play.tm/interview/30446/working-with-playstation-move/

I think one of the problems that it's had in the media and especially in the forums is that people have thought that 'Oh God, it's another motion controller - a different motion controller aimed at the social/casual market'. I think that has happened because the Wii has used that way in the past. There's been a lot of good Wii games that have used it but there's also a lot of poor Wii games, but they've all been targeted at the non-hardcore end of the market.

What the Move can do is open up the motion control style of gaming to a more hardcore market - the more traditional PlayStation/Xbox style market.

...

patsu

02-Jun-2010, 04:30

"The Last Word" on Natal:
E7vlD6cK8kE

At 8:00, the host asked, "Is there a lag or do I suck ?" -_-

LightHeaven

02-Jun-2010, 06:06

To flesh out this point some more, this week's UK chart

There's 18 360 games, 13 PS3 games (31 combined HD games), and wait for it, FIVE Wii games.

Sure Wii is selling a lot of hardware (though even that has/is declining), but do you really want to sell more hardware when it's a loss leader, as PS3/360 is, basically?

Hell maybe that's what's behind the seeming high price of Natal. Maybe MS is banking on the hardware to bring the profits, not the software.

Its also interesting looking at this list:

http://www.elspa.com/?i=3946

There are already 5 games on Wii that crossed the 1 million mark in UK, that's one more than both Ps2 and 360, and except for Mario and Sonic, they are all nintendo games.

If sony or Ms have softwares like these they will also enjoy those monstrous sales.

LightHeaven

02-Jun-2010, 06:14

"The Last Word" on Natal:
E7vlD6cK8kE

At 8:00, the host asked, "Is there a lag or do I suck ?" -_-

Can't see the screen to see the lag, but he does look like a normal person while playing, so i bet he suck :P

rabidrabbit

02-Jun-2010, 06:18

Shifty Geezer

02-Jun-2010, 09:52

These Natal demonstrations are getting really boring.
What's the point in showing people flailing mindlessy, and not showing the actual game at all :???:
MIght have worked for Wii ads, but these days people expect more.Worse than the Wii ads, which showed controlled motion. The choice of game here is mental, and we see it over and over again! Still, Patsu's latest quote suggests the hardware is spot on. If that pans out I'm sure we'll see quality titles. Like "Hole in the Wall".

:runaway:

Crossbar

02-Jun-2010, 11:43

These Natal demonstrations are getting really boring.
What's the point in showing people flailing mindlessy, and not showing the actual game at all :???:
MIght have worked for Wii ads, but these days people expect more.

Indeed, it looks pretty much as when my kids used to play EyeToy games. There must be better games to show off some unique capabilites.

Arwin

02-Jun-2010, 12:07

Indeed, it looks pretty much as when my kids used to play EyeToy games. There must be better games to show off some unique capabilites.

Don't worry, they'll come. Everything else has just been held back until E3.

obonicus

02-Jun-2010, 14:06

Are we expecting stuff miles above the Move stuff Sony showed for some reason? Because so far there really hasn't been anything showcasing the concept at all.

patsu

02-Jun-2010, 15:22

Bah, let's wait and see.

Network World showed:
* Project Natal in a monster game [concept ?] @ 1:44 (See ? It can be fun)
* PS Move squished @ 2:18

The rest is an interview with Dr. Marks:

3FGFyVG2klU

Arwin

02-Jun-2010, 16:34

Bah, let's wait and see.

Network World showed:
* Project Natal in a monster game [concept ?] @ 1:44 (See ? It can be fun)
* PS Move squished @ 2:18

The monster game for Natal you see is from the original launch promo. Interesting though now in retrospect that this concept demo actually shows lag, which makes you wonder if it was actually running live. ;)

Anyway, there were more interesting things in there. The Move controller is finished and we saw final production hardware. We also saw four controllers being used at the same time. Also the APIs are finished and have been for a little while. He also mentions that while he thinks there may always still be improvements in speed or lag, they are now at a level where speed is not really relevant anymore.

Finally, and this is probably partly an answer to obonicus' question, he mentions that Sony had several other stuff ready that they weren't allowed to see because that was being held back for E3.

Shifty Geezer

02-Jun-2010, 16:59

The 3D modelling demo was very impressive. I really hope this sees some inclusion in a consumer product as it's a unique experience and helps differentiate Move from Wii. With 3D displays I can see it getting traction as a concept with 3D artists too. Z-brush would progress to a whole new level with 3D spacial viewing and interaction.

patsu

02-Jun-2010, 17:52

Whoops, forgot about the consumer 3D modelling tool @ 1:15. It's one of the highlights of the video.

Yeah Arwin, I remember the kid but forgot about the monster demo @ Natal announcement.

EDIT: The 3D modelling tool would be extremely helpful to create a character like this:
http://community.modnation.com/en-us/creations/164773
in Modnation Racer.

AzBat

02-Jun-2010, 19:27

Engadget got a lot pics from D8 last night. Here's one...

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/natald81.jpg

Hit up the link for 31 more...

http://www.engadget.com/photos/project-natal-retail-unit-revealed-at-d8

Tommy McClain

AzBat

02-Jun-2010, 19:50

This is kind of neat. Evidently the Ricochet game has a "feature that displays shareable Polaroid-type snapshots taken of players as they play." Could see that being used in a lot of party style games.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleysblog/2012011196_d8_project_natal_demo_-_no_new.html

Pretty are 2 nice tech demo videos included there to. Both are from the D8 event last night. Still looks a little green.

Tommy McClain

Graham

02-Jun-2010, 19:58

Engadget got a lot pics from D8 last night. Here's one...

Hit up the link for 31 more...

http://www.engadget.com/photos/proje...revealed-at-d8

Tommy McClain

A few observations:
The usb splitter is still there (and I assume a power brick too) It needs air vents? :-) Funny. The skeleton tracking in pic 16 is perfect, yet the avatar is a bit off due to it's proportions being unrealistic... They all stand quite far from the device too

The 3D modelling demo was very impressive. I really hope this sees some inclusion in a consumer product as it's a unique experience and helps differentiate Move from Wii. With 3D displays I can see it getting traction as a concept with 3D artists too. Z-brush would progress to a whole new level with 3D spacial viewing and interaction.

Way in the past I'd actually done some research into this myself at university - using AR markers, etc, for 3D modeling purposes. The long and the short of it was that it works beautifully in theory and for small things, but (in my case) the tracking wasn't accurate enough and overall it just wasn't really very useful as there is no physical interaction with the surface (in the sense there is no feedback, which becomes exceptionally tiring if you attempt any level of precise movement*). Still, it'll be interesting to see if Sony do adapt it for artists. There is a lot of room for broad, organic motions and modeling that would work rather well.

*You can demonstrate this easily: Stretch your hand out in front of you, keep it as still as you can and at the same time rotate your wrist back and forth as slowly as you can.

Still looks a little green.

Yeah :-/

patsu

02-Jun-2010, 20:34

It needs air vents? :-)

That's what I noticed too. The camera is supposed to have one out of two chips in the original PrimeSense system. I wonder what else's in there.

Way in the past I'd actually done some research into this myself at university - using AR markers, etc, for 3D modeling purposes. The long and the short of it was that it works beautifully in theory and for small things, but (in my case) the tracking wasn't accurate enough and overall it just wasn't really very useful as there is no physical interaction with the surface (in the sense there is no feedback, which becomes exceptionally tiring if you attempt any level of precise movement*). Still, it'll be interesting to see if Sony do adapt it for artists. There is a lot of room for broad, organic motions and modeling that would work rather well.

*You can demonstrate this easily: Stretch your hand out in front of you, keep it as still as you can and at the same time rotate your wrist back and forth as slowly as you can.

The tool needs to be flexible. e.g., Use it like a mouse if your hands are tired (or for fine tuning). Use it in 3D to turn the objects around. Using 2D mouse to flip a 3D object can be awkward sometimes. The sensitivity of the controller will be the most critical here (like mouse sensitivity, it needs to be just right).

Sony might want to put a lot of work here to perfect the system. I believe one of the earlier interviews mentioned that their art team is already using Move to create some assets today.

I also noticed that using SIXAXIS rumble, the skeleton warriors in Demon's Souls are able to convey the feeling of impact very well during combat. I am very curious to see what kind of feedback the (weaker ?) Move rumble can provide.

Shifty Geezer

02-Jun-2010, 20:47

...and overall it just wasn't really very useful as there is no physical interaction with the surface (in the sense there is no feedback, which becomes exceptionally tiring if you attempt any level of precise movement...You can demonstrate this easily: Stretch your hand out in front of you, keep it as still as you can and at the same time rotate your wrist back and forth as slowly as you can.It'd certainly need a well-designed interface. Maybe motion control to position a virtual object and a graphics tablet to paint detail? For consumer modelling it'd be great though. Natural painting and in 3D space should be very engaging. For professionals, well, Sony have said they've had artists using Move on their PCs because they like the natural interface. Someone needs to get footage of this in action!

Shifty Geezer

02-Jun-2010, 20:49

The tool needs to be flexible. e.g., Use it like a mouse if your hands are tired (or for fine tuning). Use it in 3D to turn the objects around.A digital pen and graphics pad with a ball on the end would work well. A great big sphere like Move's would be silly, but with a close camera a little one more becoming of a stylus would work.

Maybe we should be patenting this? :mrgreen:

patsu

02-Jun-2010, 20:51

e.g., You _magnify_ the target Modnation Racer character into a life size doll, and then paint/carve away holding a giant crayon and carving tool.

Shifty Geezer

02-Jun-2010, 20:52

e.g., You _magnify_ the target Modnation Racer character into a life size doll, and then paint/carve away holding a giant crayon and carving tool.You could scan someone in by patiently drawing contours over their entire person.

patsu

02-Jun-2010, 20:53

Oh dear, why does everything lead to Internet pr0n in my mind ?

obonicus

02-Jun-2010, 21:27

Aren't you guys kinda expecting a game to implement Zbrush?

Arwin

02-Jun-2010, 21:47

Aren't you guys kinda expecting a game to implement Zbrush?

Absolutely! Think about a Monster Hunter where you hand-craft your own arrows and traps. :razz: Tonnes of applications like that to consider. Using two moves would also be quite a fun way to emulate a sling-shot, and coupled with 3D and/or some nice glass-breaking physics, I can see a lot of fun to be had. ;)

Actually if I think about it, Pain is probably already fairly close to that, with the 3D version being launched next week, all it needs is a move controller to control the launch of your puppet.

patsu

02-Jun-2010, 22:27

If people are already using PhotoShop, Final Cut Pro to create home movies and forum posts, creating a prosumer 3D tool is not really surprising. Google Sketch is another example.

Without proper tools, we have people like Quaz51, Jaeyden and the Sylvester creator who spent lot's of time realizing their craft already.

EDIT: I think most creators will simply tailor their work from a template or from another user's work.

cakefoo

03-Jun-2010, 00:26

The monster game for Natal you see is from the original launch promo. Interesting though now in retrospect that this concept demo actually shows lag, which makes you wonder if it was actually running live. ;)
When it comes from a video prefaced by this caption

http://i45.tinypic.com/1dyc13.jpg

It's best to doubt the authenticity of what you're seeing.

cakefoo

03-Jun-2010, 00:30

A few observations:
The usb splitter is still there (and I assume a power brick too) It needs air vents? :-) Funny. The skeleton tracking in pic 16 is perfect, yet the avatar is a bit off due to it's proportions being unrealistic... They all stand quite far from the device too

They claim you'll be able to stand closer at the loss of limb accuracy. But with the system already having enough trouble tracking limbs it can see, I have my doubts :grin:

Alucardx23

03-Jun-2010, 01:04

A couple of videos from the D8 Natal demonstration.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid73315185001?bctid=89553462001
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid73315185001?bctid=89556597001

Complete version.
http://video.allthingsd.com/video/d8-tech-demo-microsoft-project-natal/371153EA-45C8-4505-92A0-D4E68FAFD320

patsu

03-Jun-2010, 03:22

They claim you'll be able to stand closer at the loss of limb accuracy.

I don't quite understand this. Who are "they" ?

May be the journalists have to stand far because the filming crew is in the middle, slightly out of the way to prevent blocking Natal ?

patsu

03-Jun-2010, 03:23

John Daly's ProStroke Golf to support PS Move:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/109/1094303p1.html

A press release issued today by O-Games encourages folks to swing by the ProStroke Golf E3 booth to see Daly demonstrate the games as well as take a gander at the "ProStroke control scheme" that will implement PlayStation Move.

cakefoo

03-Jun-2010, 04:57

I don't quite understand this. Who are "they" ?I meant Kudo Tsunoda or MS. Or at least, I could have sworn they said it. For people who don't have the room in their house to stand back and be fit inside the camera's entire fov, it's supposed to take whatever part of the appendage is showing and extrapolate where it likely is.

May be the journalists have to stand far because the filming crew is in the middle, slightly out of the way to prevent blocking Natal ?I could understand why a cameraman would want to be away from the speakers so they can hear the journalist over the TV, but the player distance trend has remained consistent every time Natal is demoed.

AzBat

03-Jun-2010, 07:38

Another rumored Natal game: Sonic Free Riders...

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/06/02/rumor-natal-compatible-sonic-free-riders-coming-to-xbla/

Tommy McClain

patsu

03-Jun-2010, 07:55

I meant Kudo Tsunoda or MS. Or at least, I could have sworn they said it. For people who don't have the room in their house to stand back and be fit inside the camera's entire fov, it's supposed to take whatever part of the appendage is showing and extrapolate where it likely is.

I remember that one. Might be a misquote. I don't believe the players have to stay far away. _phil_ was saying it can't track a child beyond 5 meters. If it can't track people who are standing too close (say, 1-2 meters) also, then the device may be too limiting. Why would MS throw big $$$ at it ?

Shifty Geezer

03-Jun-2010, 09:32

A couple of videos from the D8 Natal demonstration. I just gotta say, the actual skeleton tracking is awesome! And the hand sensitivity capturing a subtle wave did impress me. The actual playing still looked a little freaky with limbs looking odd in their motion. I also noted that the skeleton doesn't match the physicality of the player, which may make things a little harder. Larger players won't have svelt figures like the raw skeleton being mapped to. If MS could adapt the skeleton size to better match the player's (broader spaced hips and shoulders), then the end result should better match the movement of the player's limbs, rather than an interpretation of player's movement mapped onto a slim avatar.

Arwin

03-Jun-2010, 09:56

Complete version.
http://video.allthingsd.com/video/d8-tech-demo-microsoft-project-natal/371153EA-45C8-4505-92A0-D4E68FAFD320

"The Future of Fun" - they really have to be careful with saying things like that. :lol: (ask Sony!)

Again that same demo though, and they were pretty strict about where you had to stand (there was also a white dot marked on the floor) and how other people had to stay out of the camera's view. I definitely think it is cool tech, but it also has a number of Playstation Eye trappings like the button pressing that I do not have a good experience with.

Still, as an exercise device I think it's very good, so i hope it will be successful anyway as a lot of people could do with the exercise ;). I'm pretty sure that a Natal game like this burns more calories than almost any Wii game.

The lag though definitely isn't bad for what it's doing, but I still can't help thinking that there are so many things still where something like the Move is going to be so much nicer to work with ... basically any kind of sports that involves holding something is likely to be better with the Move, whereas games where you use your full body Natal is going to shine.

This also tells me again that playing this game in 3D (as in on a 3D tv) is going to be far, far more satisfying, as you can see the ball coming in real depth and therefore much more properly judge depth. The more I look at it, the more I am convinced that motion controls and 3D tv tech are going to be very, very successful.

I'm now wondering how hard it would be to make a peripheral on which you can walk in any direction while staying in place. ;)

Cyan

03-Jun-2010, 13:36

New NBA 2k11 pics being played with Move and Natal (or Wave, it sounds way better). It looks amazingly fun, but still I can't help it but wonder a possible control scheme for Move or Wave.

I think Move should have the edge because of the buttons though. Pics:

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/64504/nba-2k11/images/nba-2k11-20100513040342847-000.html?page=mediaFull

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/109/1094400/MJ_Annoucement02_1275514099.jpg

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/108/1089426/motionBball_480_1273791660.jpg

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/108/1089426/nba-2k11-20100513040342847-000.jpg

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/108/1089426/nba-2k11-20100513041355167-000.jpg

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/108/1089565/nba-2k11-20100513045123378.jpg

I can imagine some of the games we will see already;

"Move Yoga", "Move Push-ups", :smile: "Move Corel Draw", "Move Painter", "Wave Ice Skating", "Wave Racer", "Wave House Builder" etc etc etc.

Arwin

03-Jun-2010, 13:45

Shifty Geezer

03-Jun-2010, 14:20

Shooting will be more natural with Wave, but how would you move around? A controller needs to be in there somewhere. And there's still the problem of user skill level. I'm crap at shooting hoops. I'd miss every time, unless the game only takes my motion as intent to shoot and then has the player with his shooting skill take the shot to his ability. At which point it's a nice gesture but not game changing. And now I'm wondering if motion makes sense in a basketball game!

Cyan

03-Jun-2010, 16:15

Those Move shots are totally fake though (in case someone missed the regular tv remotes with one of them having a ball photoshopped onto them).

Indeed, would be a nice exercise again how to integrate the two controllers into a game like this. Otherwise, I expect the 360 will just have regular controller, with only using hands like this for free shooting, much like the sixaxis was used for that purpose back in the day.
Oh gosh, if you didn't tell me I wouldn't notice. Now that I watched the pic closely I can't believe how amateurish and fake it is. In the second pic the only thing that changes is the image on the TV. I prefer not to comment more not to make an ass of myself! :shock:

In regard to the sixaxis thing.., it might be the case, most probably just for the free shooting part of the game, at least for Natal. With some imagination the whole game could be played with Move, I think!

Shooting will be more natural with Wave, but how would you move around? A controller needs to be in there somewhere. And there's still the problem of user skill level. I'm crap at shooting hoops. I'd miss every time, unless the game only takes my motion as intent to shoot and then has the player with his shooting skill take the shot to his ability. At which point it's a nice gesture but not game changing. And now I'm wondering if motion makes sense in a basketball game!
OH SHI--

Now I... just need to figure out how to make it werk. XD Wark... or whatever. So here it goes, Shifty:

Move Right - Slightly tilt your whole body to the right (the game should keep moving the player automatically even if you return to a straight position)

Move Left - Obviously tilting the body to the left

Move Forward - Displace your body towards the camera (the game should understand that you want to keep the movement going on if you don't move for a while, if not it would be a nightmare)

Move Backwards - Same, just the other way round. Taking a step or two steps backwards should do.

Keeping still - If you return your body to a straight position and put both your arms next, really close to your waist and also keeping your legs as together as you can the game should understand that you don't want to move.

Jump - Just jump *sighs*

(looking for a rebound, to block or simply jumping for the sake of it)

Regular shooting - Move your hands like in those photos.

Fade away - Same movement, just displace your body backwards at the same time. Seems tricky.

Making a feint - Do the whole motion to achieve the same, previous, movement as you were about to shoot but stop moving your hands at neck's height -might be lag inducing though, human movements are slower than those on videogames-

Dribbling - Continuously cross your arms while your player runs towards the opponent team's defense.

360º Dribble - Do a 360º movement

Lay up - Run towards the basket, and jump extending your left or right arm in front of you. The game should recognize with which hand you want to actually do the lay.up. If the player is either right or left-handed in real life this should affect the probabilities of success. Making "the move" like Jordan against Lakers would be nice.

Dunks - Running towards the basket, jump with both your arms vertically extended over your head.

Stealing (defense) - Freely moving your hands should do, back and forth, like a crazy? :smile: or in a more relaxed manner if you are the quiet-type.

Pressuring an opponent (defense) - Move your arms to simulate some kind of bear hug.

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_130/1173932603xZ7Qhz.jpg

Relaxed defense - just try to keep moving tilting your body wherever the opponent goes and that's it.

Running instead of walking (to help in defense or going for a lay-up or jam when alone towards the basket) - Tricky. It would be better using a voice command or moving your legs like you are actually running, flexing your knees rhythmically.

Things like tactics and so on, could be done if the camera is able to recognize finger movements, or either with voice commands.

That's what I can think for now. Any body movement should be replicable only using the hands or your arms, or any other upper body movement, for those with physically impaired legs, be it temporary or not.

It's one of the huge advantages of a regular controller, PS Move or Wiimote, over Wave's approach.

A Type A, Type B, Type C control for these games would be nice, as another advantage to adapt gestures for different people, which is also common in many other games using a controller, if well implemented, not as an "afterthought".

I can imagine some people just would feel like they are fooling about be it either with Move, Wave or Wiimote, yay.

Greetings.

Shifty Geezer

03-Jun-2010, 16:21

Graham

03-Jun-2010, 16:29

Hmm.

No obvious USB cable running around to the front of the 360, and a wifi adapter.

Hmmm....

Cyan

03-Jun-2010, 16:55

That sounds convincing. Now I think about it, the player position would be a good guide for the avatar's actions. Just hold the arm out to engage dribble mode, and weave the body around with intended movement. Very natural and should map well to the game environment. Whereas Move seems more controller based, unless they require double controllers and include head-tracking to get a 3-point torso tracking going.
That sounds interesting.... especially for games like GT. Also head tracking seems natural if you want to turn the car right or left without using the hands too!, not only for actual on dashboard head tracking. If they find a way to combine convincingly a button based controller with the camera features the possibilities are almost endless.

You are like me, truly interested in one of those "new" games. Judging from your posts it's one of the "symptoms" you're having, then it's probably enough to understand this. :smile: Also it's interesting to hear what other people think those games might play like.

What I find truly hard to figure out are some of the controls -back to a sports game- and how to replicate them.

I remember in NBA 2k7 you had to press A to change between players when defending, from guard to center. The game changed the player you were controlling automatically. The first time it used to choose the one closest to the ball.

I thought that this could be replicated with Wave clapping your hands, so the game changed the player after each clap. But this might be intrusive with other controls.

Also there was a way to choose an specific player pressing one of the shoulder buttons and one of the face buttons (i.e. shoulder button + A switch to Guard, X switch to Forward, etc).

Right now I don't find a way.

Perhaps to switch to a specific player touching your own hands together a lot in a sort of figure 1 , 2, 3, 4 or 5 motion depending on the player you want to use, would do....

P.S: Another idea on switching to a random player.

Bringing one hand across the top of the other and then across the top of the other again, like building a tower to switch between players regularly, in a continued motion.

patsu

03-Jun-2010, 16:56

Always fascinating when they show the skeleton tracking. I still think casual, exercise, dancing and performance games is it.

Not hot about speech recognition for gaming (as we may need multiple tries).

EDIT: I played the Basket Ball game in Wii Sports Resort and can confirm that a Wiimote+/Move controller works very well. It detected my slight wrist movement (just before ball left my hand), and felt very real. PS Eye should be able to detect leg and body motion for relative movement (on top of absolute positioning of the light ball).

If you have time, you should go try Wii Sports Resort. It's a wonderful game ! Very satisfying to see your direct actions translate into some in-game "achievements".

Shifty Geezer

03-Jun-2010, 17:06

...I thought that this could be replicated with Wave clapping your hands, so the game changed the player after each clap. But this might be intrusive with other controls.the only problem with guesture based interactions like that is introducing lag as the game needs to have enough data to determine what your intentions are. If you hands both move inwards for one frame, is that a 'bear hug' manoeuvre or going for a change-player clap? After two or three frames, is it still possible to determine? You'd need to have the whole guesture tracked and know where it ends to know the intended action, which is a heck of a lot of input time. Natal* with a controller would be ideal, allowing the player to move as they want the player to move while having the accuracy of buttons to determine actions that can't be implemented directly through motion.

*Using 'Wave' at the start of a sentence, capitalisation rules fail to distinguish it as a proper noun, and it reads first as the verb. 'Wave with a controller' then takes a different meaning. Whether intentionally or not, Move works better in this context because 'Move with a controller' implies moving the controller, which is what you do with Move. This is a reason why the name 'Wave' should be abandoned and companies go back to creating new names for their products instead of commandeering existing words and phrases. The Microsoft Wiggleotron wouldn't have any such linguistical collisions...

Rolf N

03-Jun-2010, 17:34

A digital pen and graphics pad with a ball on the end would work well. A great big sphere like Move's would be silly, but with a close camera a little one more becoming of a stylus would work.

Maybe we should be patenting this? :mrgreen:Claimed invention: a device just like the Sony Move, but with a smaller ball.

Run, don't walk, to the US PO now. They'll take this from someone else if you don't get there first.

Yay for patents on aggregation.

Cyan

03-Jun-2010, 17:46

Hmm.

No obvious USB cable running around to the front of the 360, and a wifi adapter.

Hmmm....
What about an USB adapter with two inputs, one for Natal and the other for the wifi adapter that connects both? We should know by E3 what the "status of their application" is...? .... Or perhaps the new 360 Slim has more USB ports but since that 360 is not a slim, yes, it is quite confusing.

Always fascinating when they show the skeleton tracking. I still think casual, exercise, dancing and performance games is it.

Not hot about speech recognition for gaming (as we may need multiple tries).

EDIT: I played the Basket Ball game in Wii Sports Resort and can confirm that a Wiimote+/Move controller works very well. It detected my slight wrist movement (just before ball left my hand), and felt very real. PS Eye should be able to detect leg and body motion for relative movement.

If you have time, you should go try Wii Sports Resort. It's a wonderful game !
Most probably...,:???: voice recognition could be complex enough although it's something I used to dream about when I was an adolescent, back in the 90s. Basically related to the PC in general, not only for gaming, thinking that one day will come when I'd say "Switch on" and the computer would exactly do that. Same with similar commands. It never happened but I remember engaging in conversations with friends about that.

Apparently voice recognition should work better with the dashboard's interface, but we shall see how it works with games.

Unfortunately I don't have a Wii but maybe, some day.... And hopefully I will give Wii Sports Resort a try. Mind you, I don't see it happening soon though, :sad: except at a friend's house but I don't know if she has that game.

By the way, forgot to mention I LOVED Shifty's idea. :shock: Doing a movement and activating Dribble Mode, for instance, or any other. That would be truly awesome. Repeating the same movement should stop that mode.

I think it's an important distinction to make if you want to avoid some intrusive controls. It's an idea with a lot of potential in other genres aswell.

Another idea :idea:; if you don't want to play standing still, when sitting tapping your heel up and down then your player could run.

Passing - Rotate your wrists. It's an easy way when you need very very quick passes.

cakefoo

03-Jun-2010, 21:52

Shifty Geezer

03-Jun-2010, 22:07

I think we should wait until E3 so we can get an idea of what Natal is and isn't capable of sensing. A lot of time was wasted fantasizing about the kinds of games the "Revolution" would allow, and I think Natal's capabilities are being similarly overinflated by MS.The video clearly shows the skeleton information being captured and it's evidentally very flexible, in contrast to the data we had on Wii which didn't show sensitivity or accuracy.

patsu

03-Jun-2010, 23:50

Wii Party Has Some Clever Wiimote Minigames:
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/06/03/wii_party_details/

Wanwan Karuta
The Wiimote for each of four players plays back a different sound. Which sound matches the animal that's shown on screen?

Remote Control Hide and Seek
Hide your Wiimote somewhere in the room and have other players search for it, relying only on the sound made by the Wiimote.

Sensitive Bomb
Hold the Wiimote like a bomb, and try to pass it off to other players without shaking it.

cakefoo

04-Jun-2010, 02:47

The video clearly shows the skeleton information being captured and it's evidentally very flexible, in contrast to the data we had on Wii which didn't show sensitivity or accuracy.Sure, we know how Natal collects the raw data, and how Natal is supposed to work, but there's so much hand-flinching and leg-dragging that I have yet to feel convinced that Natal will be able to recognize gestures reliably. I won't set my expectations until I see it working well, not just working.

Alucardx23

04-Jun-2010, 02:48

I’m seeing things or there is a wave pattern on the air vents?
http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/2727/natalz.jpg

AzBat

04-Jun-2010, 05:46

I’m seeing things or there is a wave pattern on the air vents?
http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/2727/natalz.jpg

You weren't the first to notice it. The original source of the "Wave" name did...

http://xbox-360.nowgamer.com/news/3313/natal-design-employs-wave-shaped-elements

Tommy McClain

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 05:59

Sure, we know how Natal collects the raw data, and how Natal is supposed to work, but there's so much hand-flinching and leg-dragging that I have yet to feel convinced that Natal will be able to recognize gestures reliably. I won't set my expectations until I see it working well, not just working.

I think the point is it doesn't really matter if it's working well in the general case. The original Wii lacked a gyro but still entertained millions of people. As long as some developers can find the right concept for Natal, we should see consumers gravitate towards it.

e.g.,
Harmonix Working On Natal Dance Game ?
http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/06/03/harmonix-working-on-natal-dance-game.aspx

Recently, word got out that Harmonix plans to use keyboards for Rock Band 3, but we've also heard that the developer has an entirely separate Natal game based entirely around dancing.

I think a dance game may suit Natal better than Wii's Just Dance, or Move's dancing title (unless the developer also uses PS Eye creatively).

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 06:13

Most probably...,:???: voice recognition could be complex enough although it's something I used to dream about when I was an adolescent, back in the 90s. Basically related to the PC in general, not only for gaming, thinking that one day will come when I'd say "Switch on" and the computer would exactly do that. Same with similar commands. It never happened but I remember engaging in conversations with friends about that.

Apparently voice recognition should work better with the dashboard's interface, but we shall see how it works with games.

I dislike speech recognition interface because:
* It's usually inconsistent (I may talk differently under different circumstances)
* It serializes the operation by having the computer/console wait for me to finish
* False positive and interruption are not uncommon (Other people may be around)
* I don't use voice chat during gaming to keep the noise level down. Therefore, I most likely can't use speech recognition too.

Dashboard or XMB usage may be fine but if it's automation/macro, I think capabilities like clapping, gestures may work better. These can be used by mute people too.

Under very specific situations, voice input may be useful:
* Humming/singing (e.g., to find a song, karaoke)
* Communication tool
* Education (e.g., language learning)
* Hands are busy or dirty (in the kitchen)

rabidrabbit

04-Jun-2010, 07:16

I think the point is it doesn't really matter if it's working well in the general case. The original Wii lacked a gyro but still entertained millions of people. As long as some developers can find the right concept for Natal, we should see consumers gravitate towards it.

e.g.,
Harmonix Working On Natal Dance Game ?
http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/06/03/harmonix-working-on-natal-dance-game.aspx

I think a dance game may suit Natal better than Wii's Just Dance, or Move's dancing title (unless the developer also uses PS Eye creatively).
For rhythm based games there really shouldn't be much lag.
Dancing might get away with a bit more lag than for example a guitar hero type game, but not too much.
The lag that's been shown might still be passable, depending on the music and coreography used.

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 07:24

It looks like the demonstrator was rather careful in maintaining her speed. I think if she swing wildly, or if multiple people barge in, Natal will be stressed.

Graham

04-Jun-2010, 12:11

... microphone stuff ...

The advantage natal has is that the array microphone can isolate sounds from individual players. Combined with player facial recognition, etc, then in theory there shouldn't be many issues with disruption, noise, etc.

Microsoft have pretty decent track record in speech, all things considered.

rabidrabbit

04-Jun-2010, 12:40

Arwin

04-Jun-2010, 12:40

Silent_Buddha

04-Jun-2010, 13:56

It's still not easy. I am fairly impressed with Singstar in that it recognises artists and titles pretty quickly without any training, but it takes a few secs to process your command. But then it probably has to check against a far larger database than most games would need. Inherently speech is laggy, because it takes some time to say something.

Which wouldn't be a problem for, say, adventure games. Or educational games. Or perhaps in the Team management screen of a sports simulation.

Using the sports simulation, even with lag it may be much faster to just call out the name of the player you want, rather than scrolling to him and selecting him. Just an example. :)

Then again, if I had to try pronouncing some of the names of players in the NHL... :D

Regards,
SB

Shifty Geezer

04-Jun-2010, 14:47

The biggest improvement that could be made to sports games and management interfaces is to do away with it completely! I play FIFA to play FIFA, not to rearrange a team of professional athletes who can't manage to stay in shape for two matches on the trot.

So, uh-hum, your suggestions for audio interfaces are excellent examp[les of how speech recognition could ease things like player searches. Just, please developers, understand the difference between a sports sim and sports management sim and don't force us to do both if we don't want to!

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 15:27

The advantage natal has is that the array microphone can isolate sounds from individual players. Combined with player facial recognition, etc, then in theory there shouldn't be many issues with disruption, noise, etc.

Microsoft have pretty decent track record in speech, all things considered.

But it won't know who to give priority to (e.g., if kid talks first, then I may be ignored; although sometimes he may be the legit user while daddy is the idiot who's trying to tease him). Plus not all noises come from human, visible or not. All the surrounding sound will permeate/stack on top of each other even if the mic tries to pick up from one area.

One of the best uses for voice-driven UI is when I don't have to walk all the way to the TV/console to issue command (e.g., play music). So the camera may not even see me. If I had to go to the TV and face the camera, I might as well use gestures or remote for more accurate hit. I use RemotePlay for this right now though.

I'm sure it'd be better than cellphone speech recognition, but the success rate needs to be very high and consistent. Not sure how accurate the mic array is though. May need to filter out background noise/music.

Which wouldn't be a problem for, say, adventure games. Or educational games. Or perhaps in the Team management screen of a sports simulation.

Using the sports simulation, even with lag it may be much faster to just call out the name of the player you want, rather than scrolling to him and selecting him. Just an example. :)

Then again, if I had to try pronouncing some of the names of players in the NHL... :D

Yap, picking an item out of a known library is one of the most successful voice-input use cases. Something like Scribblenaut or Heavy Rain should work too.

SingStar works amazingly well, but then again, they kinda cheated because the mic is right beside the player's mouth. So the voice input characteristics can be tuned rather accurately (more consistent acoustic parameters).

EDIT: I remember MS signed the Scribblenaut developer for a game ? If so, we will probably see some sort of Scribbenaut for Natal.

A good way to make general voice input more worthwhile is to allow titles to export their top-level macros to the Natal hardware unit (at the Dashboard level). So the user can utter a voice command even when the 360 is off, and have the console boot up, start the right game and, for instance, go all the way to joining an MP session waiting for a game. I suspect this is why Natal has a separate power supply.

If they have this kind of structure laid out, then the user can also use gestures or the controller to choose these high level macros (like AppleScript !)

Gon0S

04-Jun-2010, 16:06

I just have to wonder how Natal voice recognition could be used reliably ?
I know this board is english, but keep in mind loads of people are not talking english at all.

My father is blind and use speech2text and text2speech french professionnal tools. The T2S works really fine, the other one is not really bad but not perfectly relialable... So I just try to imagine a game where I have to try several time to give a vocal order... hu, hope it is not COD6 because you're dead before the system undestand it, or your co-fighters are already trapped because you have some difficulties to be understand by the system, useless... Or maybe we juste have to put large delay between enemy moves and gunfires ;-)

On the hand, speech recognition in latest Microsoft Office Communication Suite may work fine in english, but in other languages, is it just a pure mess. We have the voice to text voicemail system activated on our business system, and it is really funny to look at what the system do with its speech to text engine... Every week, we are sending voice to text messages to each other to find out the weirdest messages. And it is really funny, but frankly we decided to not activate this options for our customers !

I just really fear your hopes for reliable speech recognition hare really too high for the technology MS will deliver. I do not even imagine the difficulties to implement clever and usefull voice commands.

About the gestures commands that you are thinking about, I wonder how you can think people will have pleasure to do the movement you imagined for the backetball game !
Even if the NAtal can perfectly understand approximativ gesture (should I say guess?) and map them to the right command the player want to mimick, it will often be clumsy and unatural. Just imagine you mimick running (in basket game or a in a maze game,), you want to turn 180° ? Clap in your hands ? jump ? cry :go back ? fell on your @$$ ? What about other action you may have to do at the same time ?
Gesture have to be easy to do and replicate, they must not tired the player too fast, whereas player will have fun 5 minutes (or even less for couch potatoes) and let the system powered off until a friend of him will have a look at the wonder a few weeks or months later...

And just another example, let driving in a car driving game, simulator or not. What will do the system if I need to cleanup my dirty noze ? Activate the horn ? do nothing ? pause the game because as my driving teacher told me old the time, my hands have to be on the driving wheel ?
Ok my example is maybe weird, but what about all days gesture that could interfere with Natal ? How much false movement may be ignored by the system ? I really want to test this because the technology amaze me, but I really think Natal alone is not the right solution. Natal technology should be coupled to a wiimote/move like device, because all day long a human touch buttons, turns wheels, hold sticks/pens but no ways we hold our arms or move them in air for fun, at least if you are not doing airguitar ;-) (by the way, funny to see airguitar contest, but really anoying sport to do yourself, no ?)

Really, I prefer wait E3 to see what MS will finally deliver, because for the moment, I do think Natal/Wave, without any devices in hands, will be totally useless for anything than really simple games (wack the worm anyone ? hu how funny future gaming will become)

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 16:29

Heh heh, I know what exactly you're talking about.

More than a decade ago, I set up a dedicated voice input Mac (with DSP card) to play. The room had 2-3 people, but they were mostly away. I had a software agent running in the background observing my actions (via AppleEvents and other system events). The system was also hooked up as a fax and telephone (via the Telephony API) so that I could convert them into digital form. Even with me alone, it had trouble recognizing the right phrases consistently.

The software agent could recognize some of my basic usage patterns but they could also get in the way and became pretty annoying/mundane. Turned off most of the bells and whistles in 2 weeks. Turned off all of them in 1-2 months. It became just a normal Mac. ^_^

I did remember annotating a birthday song for the Mac to sing to a friend (It's lame but funny anyway).

Today, I still try speech recognition once in a while, they haven't advanced much. >_<
In a nutshell, the user has to train themselves at the same time to coax performance out of the system.

Still, I think there are pockets of scenarios where they are useful.

Besides picking items from a list, I think natural interfaces can be great as a common macro system to bypass layers of dialog boxes. The applications/system has to be designed in certain way though. But once those macros are written up, I expect them to be available to a regular controller, or remotely say... via RemotePlay. The "new" thing here is the system and application design, not merely the natural interfaces. :)

EDIT: I think some of these AI guessworks is also useful in media searching. Right now, I have to go through the entire library one by one manually (using some sort of meta-data such as date). The "guessing" system in Photo Gallery is very helpful because it presents the library based on its content. I only need to go through a subset of the photos based on the guesses.

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 20:32

Joy Ride becomes Project Natal launch game:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=249663

Microsoft's arcade racer Joy Ride has been reworked as a Natal launch title, CVG can reveal.

According to a senior retail source, the title will be available on Natal from day one later this year - and will no longer be free-to-play.

In development at first party studio BigPark, the avatar-based game was unveiled as a free-to-play Xbox Live Arcade title at last year's E3.

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 21:09

Another good area to get into: accessibility
http://kotaku.com/5555740/vi-fit-is-wii-sports-for-the-blind

A video game research project at the University of Nevada, Reno, is creating Wii Sports-based PC games that don't require eyesight to play.

The two games in the VI Fit line play much like their Wii Sports counterparts. Both VI Tennis and VI Bowling mimic their respective sports through use of the Wii remote. The only difference is that instead of seeing where the tennis ball is coming from or visually lining up a strike, blind players hear and feel the games through use of sound and vibrotactile cues.

...

AzBat

04-Jun-2010, 21:20

Joy Ride becomes Project Natal launch game:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=249663

Booo! :mad:

I don't want to play it with Natal. If it's still the same game but with added Natal support, then I might still buy it, just depends on the cost. What a bonehead move. <shakes head>

Tommy McClain

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 21:30

We gave up toying with the brain wave controller (Excuse: Too busy at work). We kinda felt insulted by this:
http://kotaku.com/5555690/bring-on-the-monkey-mind+powered-robots

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have trained monkeys to manipulate robotic appendages using the power of their minds, once again proving one solid scientific fact: monkeys kick ass.

cZn46l7uEKg

Would be funny if people can play Resident Evil 10 with their cats and dogs.
Your sidesick will raise one of his legs near a tire or a tree, or may be grab one of the zombies' limbs and run. Old habits die hard.

AzBat

04-Jun-2010, 21:52

Some news on different Natal demos...

The first game we tried was a mixture of dodgeball and handball. I swatted my hand and my little red avatar smacked the ball down the court, where it popped balloons and then bounced back.
...
We next tried an obstacle course where you have to dart under trees and jump over logs.
...
The final demo (these may not be the games that are actually released) had us in a red raft, bouncing along a river as we bent and jumped to control our craft. This was my favorite, a real head-rush inducer.

Here some video:

rafting game... 0:00 to 0:07
Ricochet... 0:25 to 0:29 & 0:45 to 1:11

Jm0KKa6wACQ

http://www.parade.com/news/2010/06/06-how-i-became-an-avatar.html

Rafting game looks fun.

Tommy McClain

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 23:04

Another Move pricing rumor:
http://www.mundogamers.com/ps3/noticia/110009/ps-move-costara-menos-de-60.html

According to a GAF poster (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=21637045&postcount=1605), PS Eye + Move + demo disc = under 60€ in Europe.
Why would I want a demo disc instead of a real game/app ?

EDIT:
Dr. Marks' keynote in Games for Health conference (Shaky cam):

OkTnZluYo1E

(Too techie ! :no:)

Can see some tech demoes with kids !

Part 2 is here:

CSjedUJKjug

Silent_Buddha

04-Jun-2010, 23:18

But it won't know who to give priority to (e.g., if kid talks first, then I may be ignored; although sometimes he may be the legit user while daddy is the idiot who's trying to tease him). Plus not all noises come from human, visible or not. All the surrounding sound will permeate/stack on top of each other even if the mic tries to pick up from one area.

One of the best uses for voice-driven UI is when I don't have to walk all the way to the TV/console to issue command (e.g., play music). So the camera may not even see me. If I had to go to the TV and face the camera, I might as well use gestures or remote for more accurate hit. I use RemotePlay for this right now though.

I'm sure it'd be better than cellphone speech recognition, but the success rate needs to be very high and consistent. Not sure how accurate the mic array is though. May need to filter out background noise/music.

How accurate is the voice recognition in the Ford (Microsoft) Sync? I've heard good things about it, but have never had hands on experience with it though my next car will probably have it (2012 Ford Focus). Heck it's enough of a feature that people buy the car because of Sync. Rather than thinking of it as a bonus extra, it's consider THE purchasing decider.

It has to deal with road noise, music, and people chattering while still performing voice recognition.

That might give us an idea of how capable Natal's voice recognition might be.

Regards,
SB

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 23:22

The driver position is known though. I doubt it will work well if a baby is wailing in the car, or heavy metal is playing through the deck.

In an average case, probably like how our PC performs. I believe Sync has other features that are not speech recognition (e.g., text-to-speech, MP3 player integration).

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 23:34

10 minutes of Move gameplay (by 2 eh... housewives ?)

cu-A9DfdPFs

The game looks like Sports Championship.

Graham

04-Jun-2010, 23:42

The driver position is known though. I doubt it will work well if a baby is wailing in the car, or heavy metal is playing through the deck.

However Natal has an array microphone. Array mic's allow you to separate the recorded audio based on direction and background ambiance. In theory, as it knows where you are in the room it should be able to detect who is speaking.

That rafting/ricochet video is rather hilarious. There is no way any system could track them :mrgreen:

patsu

04-Jun-2010, 23:45

However Natal has an array microphone. Array mic's allow you to separate the recorded audio based on direction and background ambiance. In theory, as it knows where you are in the room it should be able to detect who is speaking.

If the acoustic environment of the car is known beforehand (e.g., enclosed cockpit of known car model), the Sync people can tune the hardware and firmware for it during config.

Although Natal and PSEye could detect the location of the speaker(s) in real time, they are in an unknown location with unknown acoustic parameters. They need to self adjust/calibrate since the experts won't be around to help.

I could be wrong though (Was exploring with an audio engineer to implement echo cancellation on a PC as a startup idea -- when Skype was first introduced).

Graham

05-Jun-2010, 00:06

mmm. Well, you can make some guesses. :-)

That sports champions video really demonstrates how difficult it is to get an intuitive game mechanic from a motion control system. The number of on screen prompts and help/option dialogs was pretty mad, although the pointing seemed to work well.

It'll be especially difficult for titles like that to distinguish themselves from Wii software. I wouldn't expect many people could see a difference.

The Move Party demo at the end was clearly more enjoyable for the people playing. The simpler actions with clearer directions, more intuitive goals and the 'novel' virtual mirror interface clearly help enormously. Less abstraction, less confusion, more fun.

patsu

05-Jun-2010, 00:12

mmm. Well, you can make some guesses. :-)

There are adaptive algorithms also, but they won't be able to adapt to sudden/unexpected noise (visiting guests all talk at the same time).

That sports champions video really demonstrates how difficult it is to get an intuitive game mechanic from a motion control system. The number of on screen prompts and help/option dialogs was pretty mad, although the pointing seemed to work well.

It'll be especially difficult for titles like that to distinguish themselves from Wii software. I wouldn't expect many people could see a difference.

Yap ! May be they go with the "adult" look to differentiate from Wii's kiddy look. I for one prefer the cuter, kiddy look. Consumers at large most likely don't care.

The Move Party demo at the end was clearly more enjoyable for the people playing. The simpler actions with clearer directions, more intuitive goals and the 'novel' virtual mirror interface clearly help enormously. Less abstraction, less confusion, more fun.

*nod* *nod* The simpler the better.
The best case is probably those games that are easy to pickup, yet take time to master.

That's why I like the table tennis game in Wii Sports Resort. Dancing is another obvious one.

EDIT:
That rafting/ricochet video is rather hilarious. There is no way any system could track them :mrgreen:

Most of the time it shouldn't matter, but I'd love to see where PS Move breaks down. Those high res, high frequency specs look good on paper. It's difficult to internalize just how fast (or slow) they can track accurately.

patsu

05-Jun-2010, 00:43

Wired has an article on Natal too:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-06/1/project-natal-can't-impress-a-hardcore-gamer?page=all

Haven't read it myself yet. Got to leave soon.

patsu

05-Jun-2010, 02:58

http://kotaku.com/5555950/get-your-project-natal-justin-bieber-fixes-simultaneously

Attention, Xbox 360 fans with an incurable case of Bieber Fever! The Tiger Beat coverboy and teenage pop star is buddying up with his friends at Microsoft to bring you hands-on time with Project Natal this fall.

Xbox 360 is underwriting the Bieb's "My World" tour this fall, which will be schlepping Project Natal playable kiosks across the United States and Canada, giving you a chance to fawn over Justin and (maybe) play Joy Ride with your hands and feet.

jonabbey

05-Jun-2010, 06:31

I think the big news here is that Microsoft PR is getting Natal in front of a wide audience of media folk ahead of E3, whereas Sony appears not to be.

Silent_Buddha

05-Jun-2010, 07:35

Well, that isn't particularly new news. Microsoft have been showing off Natal at various media events for a while now.

What is new is that with that kotaku link, it appears they are now going to start letting the general public get some hands on with it also.

Regards,
SB

patsu

05-Jun-2010, 07:39

I saw Justin Bieber's posters for sales. Seems like a hot property. ^_^

gongo

05-Jun-2010, 07:46

MS keep showing the same Natal "Balls" gameplay test vids......from a gamer's perspective it looks so silly...*sigh*...like it or not (i dont) but...Natal is going to be a big hit with the moms....casual gaming is casual gaming...makes big dollars and news...NDS, Wii, iPhones...MS is wanting part of the pie. That is what we know will happen.

dragonelite

05-Jun-2010, 08:07

I saw Justin Bieber's posters for sales. Seems like a hot property. ^_^

now if Justin Bieber say its awesome.
Then the big horde of 12~13 year old girls will buy it....:roll:

patsu

05-Jun-2010, 08:10

Well... MS may have a girlie app for Natal. We haven't seen all yet.

Silent_Buddha

05-Jun-2010, 13:04

Well... MS may have a girlie app for Natal. We haven't seen all yet.

I was thinking Japanese dating sim where Natal could track where your eyes are looking when you said that...

But, uh...that would be for boys... :p

Regards,
SB

patsu

05-Jun-2010, 13:08

Natal can't track eye movement. :) (Too small/subtle, considering that it can't generate the skeleton for individual fingers)

Silent_Buddha

05-Jun-2010, 13:14

Good thing too or else a lot of gamers would get virtually slapped in those supposed dating sims. :D

Regards,
SB

dragonelite

05-Jun-2010, 15:18

Natal can't track eye movement. :) (Too small/subtle, considering that it can't generate the skeleton for individual fingers)

It has a RGB camera they can probably use for tracking eye pupils.
And for the girls do some kind of dancing game or fashing stuff where they can dress themselfes with their in game created fashion pieces.:???:

Inbe4 wii fital sensor for dating sims in japan higher heart rate staring at digital boobs or in extreme cases watching under their skirts. :roll:

JB9861

05-Jun-2010, 17:02

http://kotaku.com/5555950/get-your-project-natal-justin-bieber-fixes-simultaneously

But I only want the Natal fix....:sad:

rabidrabbit

05-Jun-2010, 17:25

I hadn't even heard of Justin Bieber before reading about him here :)
Guess that just proves how old I am...

patsu

05-Jun-2010, 17:41

It has a RGB camera they can probably use for tracking eye pupils.
And for the girls do some kind of dancing game or fashing stuff where they can dress themselfes with their in game created fashion pieces.:???:

It's not a question of whether Natal can see color or IR. The user needs to be very very close to the screen for the camera to identify the pupils. It would not know where the user is focusing on too (Only a very rough guesstimate). Tracking pupils accurately requires specialized state of the art equipments (e.g., for measuring whether the user is looking at a banner advertisement).

Shifty Geezer

05-Jun-2010, 17:42

It has a RGB camera they can probably use for tracking eye pupils.
The eyes will only be a few pixels in size, and the amount the pupil moves to look at different parts of the screen will be tiny. I don't think eye-tracking will be possible at distance.

patsu

06-Jun-2010, 02:23

Ok so while checking out 3DTVs, my family stopped by a Wii to mess around, my wife decided to use her mileage points to get a Wii right after that. :-O

I am very impressed because I know how many gadgets have died trying to get her attention. This one closed the deal in one game.

A lot has been said about Nintendo's strategies, luck, and what have you, the thing is WiiSports Resort is a superb title. It's like the Zelda/Half Life/LBP/Uncharted 2/<insert your favorite game> for casuals.

Nintendo's games is what sealed the deal. That is all.

Arwin

06-Jun-2010, 07:28

Yes, this is why Sony has it's Wii Sports equivalent and Wii Play equivalent. It's become sort of a base requirement - people would never part from their Wii without it. I presume MS will have at least the same.

Which activity/activities did she try?

patsu

06-Jun-2010, 08:17

We tried bowling, wakeboarding, table tennis and cycling. I walked away to check out the 3DTVs halfway, don't know what else she played.

I am not sure if Sports Championship and The Shoot can compete with Wii Sports Resort's breadth and depth. Will have to see (Sony's taking a big risk here). Everyone will basically judge PS Move with their Wiimote and Wiimote+ experiences. For Wii Sports Resort, I can tell a lot of thoughts went into fine tuning, pacing, taking care of the gamers, and making the game cute and "deep". ^_^

Graham

06-Jun-2010, 11:56

The power of Wii Sports! :mrgreen:

I'd imagine Sony will use Move Play as their pack in / demo app. It's the only thing I've seen from Sony that approaches the level of instant intuitive control that made Wii Sports (and the Wii) so successful.

You only need to watch at that sports champions video from yesterday and see how important this is.
The average person walking through a shop is going to give up on something very quickly if it doesn't click right away. That's assuming they even bother to try it.

The Wii was a massive leap forward in breaking down interface abstractions, and it deserves all the success it's seen. If Microsoft play their cards right, Natal should be a similar leap forward because anyone who even walks past it should instantly understand it.
Sony don't have it quite so easy, but they can still do a good job if they pick the right software.

patsu

06-Jun-2010, 15:45

You mean Move Party ?

Unless there are visitors, my wife won't identify with it. OTOH, I can see her play WiiSports Resort every so often.

She thinks gaming is the greatest time waster on Earth (She plays casual Flash games though :roll:). At least WSR reminds her to relax and exercise (She's too busy). The accurate Wiimote+ motion tracking also convinced her that this is a close substitute. She didn't bite when she played WiiSports last time, although she was clearly entertained.

About user experiences, yes, Sony does not have a polished newbie environment. XMB is pretty minimalist. Great for seasoned users, not so great for telling people what they should do first, what's most fun, most popular, etc.

I expect MS's in-store demo to have hands-on and also draw the crowd, sell itself via interesting concepts, use cases and tech demoes (like those subtle 30 minute informercials). Sony, as usual, will likely pull out their "We can do everything" video, briefly touch on everything and go, rewind and repeat. Ironically, if they take this approach, the users will most likely miss a large part of what PS3 can do ("Yeah, yeah" and move on).

Graham

07-Jun-2010, 14:04

That's pretty much my concern with Move Party (I actually wrote Wii Party the first time, but changed it to Move Play :mrgreen:).

Of everything they have shown, I believe it's clearly the most intuitive - and best shows the capabilities of the motion control system. But as you say it's a bit difficult to say who it would appeal to outside of a party environment.

She thinks gaming is the greatest time waster on Earth

:frown:
It's sad, but it is a very commonly held view. Anything that can help show people what gaming can offer is a good thing. I honestly do believe the industry could be 5x bigger than it is.

obonicus

07-Jun-2010, 14:31

Even Nintendo last year talked about how they think a significant portion of the population is in the 'Never' category. This isn't even 'Wii Sports' never, either.

patsu

07-Jun-2010, 15:09

10 minutes of Move gameplay (by 2 eh... housewives ?)

cu-A9DfdPFs

The game looks like Sports Championship.

The video came from this article:
http://translate.google.de/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.videogameszone.de%2FP layStation-Move-Misc-Hardware-234323%2FVideos%2FPlayStation-Move-Neues-Video-mit-frischen-Spielszenen-749898%2F&sl=de&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8

The link has another archery video. It looks challenging without trained stable hands.

patsu

07-Jun-2010, 22:39

The Shoot intro:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/06/07/playstation-move-developer-diary-the-shoot-for-ps3/

The Shoot is a title exclusive to PlayStation Move, an arcade shooter where you are an action hero and the PlayStation Move motion controller is your gun. Listen to the director and shoot your way through five different spoofs of classic B-Movie themes: the Wild West, undersea monsters, haunted house, mobsters and a robot invasion. Shoot through parts of the highly destructible set to see what they’re really made of.

@ 1:50, you can see PSEye track the player's position to avoid projectiles.

patsu

08-Jun-2010, 07:54

IMHO, this MS technology is more interesting and useful than Natal:

6_7BzUED39A

Seems to complement Natal well.

LightHeaven

08-Jun-2010, 08:54

IMHO, this MS technology is more interesting and useful than Natal:

6_7BzUED39A

Seems to complement Natal well.

For day use anywhere perhaps, but i don't see why that air guitar part wouldn't be achievable with natal.

Shifty Geezer

08-Jun-2010, 09:33

Seems to complement Natal well.Hmmm, yes. A controllerless interface, and some electrodes trailing wires across the living room... :p

Billy Idol

08-Jun-2010, 10:29

10 minutes of Move gameplay (by 2 eh... housewives ?)

cu-A9DfdPFs

The game looks like Sports Championship.

/*puts on "enchanted hat of gaming culture defender" (+5 wisdom, +2 argumentation, -10 potency)*/

The problem I have with this and with Natal and with Wii games: why in hell do these games always have to look so shitty with respect to graphics. Animations are a joke, graphic fidelity is non existant in all shown clips so far - for me this just screams low quality product. If they really want to attract me with such stuff - put some "quality" in it: in graphics tech as well as in gamedesign tech and don't just rely on people behaving stupid in front of camera to suggest ultimate fun!!

_phil_

08-Jun-2010, 11:08

For day use anywhere perhaps, but i don't see why that air guitar part wouldn't be achievable with natal.

Natal couldn't do that.Tracking is far from being acurate enough.

Arwin

08-Jun-2010, 11:51

The user selection screen of the Sports Challenge thing isn't very exciting yet, hopefully that improves a little. In the mean-time however, I'm impressed with the precision of the pointer - that seems pretty good.

Billy Idol

08-Jun-2010, 12:15

This at least seems ok graphically:

http://ps3.nowgamer.com/video/play/993/no-lag-ps-move-pre-e3-socom-hands-on

Rolf N

08-Jun-2010, 14:30

IMHO, this MS technology is more interesting and useful than Natal:

6_7BzUED39A

Seems to complement Natal well.Controllers are muscle-machine interfaces. All they've achieved is to remove tactile feedback and reduce precision. This is a fool's errand.

The "always available" pitch also assumes that you don't need the muscles for anything else, which is ridiculous. The dude carrying his luggage clearly already needed his hand muscles, so how does the system tell he's currently controlling it or doing something else? Voice recognition? W/e it is, identify it, use it, and remove all the other cruft.

patsu

08-Jun-2010, 15:20

For day use anywhere perhaps, but i don't see why that air guitar part wouldn't be achievable with natal.

Depends on how complex you want Natal to recognize air guitar gestures I guess. If it's open palm and fist, it can do that. But if it's individual intricate finger movement 3-4 feet away, it may not be accurate.

Hmmm, yes. A controllerless interface, and some electrodes trailing wires across the living room... :p

They have a portable version.

The "always available" pitch also assumes that you don't need the muscles for anything else, which is ridiculous. The dude carrying his luggage clearly already needed his hand muscles, so how does the system tell he's currently controlling it or doing something else? Voice recognition? W/e it is, identify it, use it, and remove all the other cruft.

Yeah need to calibrate. I'm more interested in this than Natal because it's not tied to a screen.

Also for voice recognition, I just remember that Natal doesn't really need that 4-mic array. Every 360 owner has a headset, I think it may be more accurate to use that headset since it's right beside the user's mouth (Just ignore the tagline "You're the controller" :-P).

patsu

08-Jun-2010, 15:57

Also this Milo tech demo is interesting too:
my5sxc5Sras

The 2D recognition is "simply" edge recognition. But the idea of accumulating Milo's knowledge via a network is intriguing. They need to think of an app or game for it though.

Used to run a wallpaper site. Besides allowing the users to play a mini game with the wallpapers we all submitted, we were also interested to build a semantic network of wallpapers. Users were helping to tag and file wallpapers correctly (e.g., people may not know the name of the female model in the wallpaper).

We didn't complete the project. Built a bot with a web-based text dialog parser for folks to ask questions (like Eliza), and that's it. Instead of Milo, we called our bot Elaine. ^_^

The other way to do this is to do something like Playstation Home. That environment needs a persistent, collective user generated content-base or "hive mind". It's a time waster anyway, so going there to fool around with the bots and people (like MUSH) is not out of line.

We also hooked up a MUSH server behind the wallpaper site. People could walk in the MUSH Library (like a real book library) and see the most popular wallpapers as a prototype. We also got a bot to roam in the world (It's the same Elaine bot), but since we never complete the toy semantic network project, she's dumb. :-)

EDIT: That's why I like the idea behind Playstation Home/MUSH. You can integrate a lot of interesting things in a virtual world. It doesn't have to be 3D. A text-based or 2D interface will work just as well (or better !). Then you can let people venture into the 3D world to look for and play with the bot he/she's been talking to.

patsu

08-Jun-2010, 16:23

http://www.vg247.com/2010/06/03/miyamoto-ms-and-sony-motion-devices-are-threatening/

Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto’s told Edge that Microsoft and Sony’s rush to motion with Natal and Move is “threatening” behaviour.

“Whenever something we have created and presented is followed by copies, we always feel it is threatening,” said the dev legend.

“More than that, we’re concerned that others are trying to do something similar for the sake of it. It’s not encouraging to Nintendo.”

IMHO, it's more worrisome to see Nintendo think that MS and Sony are simply copying them. Better bring out your big guns !

OTOH, he uses the word "rush", so may be Ninty is also concerned that quality will be compromised ? (consumers may get fed up by rush jobs).

Nesh

08-Jun-2010, 16:54

Also this Milo tech demo is interesting too:
my5sxc5Sras

For some reason I feel that the 3D depth detection could be redundant for something like Milo and anything equipped with a camera and microphone can do that with the right software

scently

08-Jun-2010, 18:51

For some reason I feel that the 3D depth detection could be redundant for something like Milo and anything equipped with a camera and microphone can do that with the right software

Hence, this is why Natal is not just hardware but critically also, software, which is where MSFT strength lie.

patsu

08-Jun-2010, 18:57

According to Peter Molyneux, they are trying to make 3D object recognition work (by having users "teach" Natal collectively).

The depth perception may be useful to get a sense of the surrounding (e.g., scanning your living room for known/learned items).

We'll see how well it turns out. Other than the out-of-the-box items, the learning could take a while to be accurate.

But yes, you may be able to do some/most of the object recognition via 2D image analysis (and sound). Proper lighting may be needed for accurate color perception though.

EDIT: I remember some universities/labs were developing a semantic network of general knowledge for a virtual human. Perhaps their databases can be used here. ^_^

Nesh

08-Jun-2010, 23:50

Hence, this is why Natal is not just hardware but critically also, software, which is where MSFT strength lie.
I dont see that critical acclaim. The only thing it gets so far is marketing hype and expectations about the potential of the hardware.

The software is any app or game that exploits the available hardware. And that can be either from MS or some other company.

Removing Natal's ability to detect depth, all you are left with is simply any camera and a microphone. And that alone wouldnt have made people excited about the potential.

patsu

09-Jun-2010, 03:37

I dont see that critical acclaim. The only thing it gets so far is marketing hype and expectations about the potential of the hardware.

Well, we also hear occasional developer praises and skeptisms, which could mean the system works marvelously within some bounds.

The software is any app or game that exploits the available hardware. And that can be either from MS or some other company.

Removing Natal's ability to detect depth, all you are left with is simply any camera and a microphone. And that alone wouldnt have made people excited about the potential.

You may be right earlier on to say that many of Milo's capabilities can be done without depth perception, but MS will find applications to emphasize Natal's unique features (e.g., already mentioned Xbox Live users teaching Milo collectively, recognizing 3D objects).

Even though speech recognition may not be 100% reliable, the fact that every 360 comes with a headset will allow developers to experiment with interesting features. The hardcore part of their presentation may still have controllers like the traditional 360 controller pad, headset, 3D glasses, etc. augmented by natural interfaces.

Afterall, no one has demanded that the traditional pad should be replaced by a wand. Sony is taking a big risk trying to introduce the wand directly for core gaming (See Socom 4). Unless there are concrete and evident improvements, it is very likely to end up like SIXAXIS (See Lair).

The casual part of MS's presentation may rely solely on controller-free gaming. For some games, these people may not need high specifications. The excitement may come from seeing refreshing applications for casuals, especially female gamers, young and old.

Most US consumers may not have seen "old" tricks like the EyePet's sketch recognition, sing-along, or even EyeToy motion games. If MS can get all of them working (even partially), their massive marketing effort is going to grab a bigger mindshare than Sony.

I also think that a lot can be done to simplify game UI today.

I'd say if the 3 vendors can usher more people into the gaming industry, it should be a win-win for all of us.

EDIT:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/109/1095582p1.html

We already knew that Fable III would be at the show, but this comes as the first confirmation of sorts that Milo will make another appearance. Milo, a game where you interact with a virtual boy via Project Natal, was unveiled at E3 of 2009 but has not been heard from since.

goonergaz

09-Jun-2010, 10:23

Afterall, no one has demanded that the traditional pad should be replaced by a wand. Sony is taking a big risk trying to introduce the wand directly for core gaming (See Socom 4). Unless there are concrete and evident improvements, it is very likely to end up like SIXAXIS (See Lair).

I don't exactly disagree with this PoV - however, it has been pointed out that the library used is very close to the Wii so any games that will also appear on the Wii should have Move support along with PS3 exclusives (as I'm sure Sony will push for games to support it).

SIXAXIS was a different scenario, it was one of a kind on a new machine that wasn't selling too well.

Silent_Buddha

09-Jun-2010, 12:23

I dont see that critical acclaim. The only thing it gets so far is marketing hype and expectations about the potential of the hardware.

The software is any app or game that exploits the available hardware. And that can be either from MS or some other company.

Removing Natal's ability to detect depth, all you are left with is simply any camera and a microphone. And that alone wouldnt have made people excited about the potential.

As I've stated before, the hardware is the least interesting thing about Natal. It's what MS is doing after the camera has captured the image and depth data and before the applications that people will use that is far far more interesting.

At least for me. :) I'd love to get some hands on time with the server farm they are using to develope the algorithms that Natal will be using to interpret, recognize, and differentiate multiple moving people with intermixed and obscured limbs.

I'd love to see how close the probability numbers come to determining skeletal locations for points (in 3 dimensions) which are completely obscured by baggy/shapeless clothing using only data from other unrelated body parts.

I'm willing to bet that much of the twitchiness we see in some of the demos is MS still fine tuning the number weighting it is giving to probable positions of skeletal points in 3 dimensions.

Regards,
SB

Graham

09-Jun-2010, 14:01

I dont see that critical acclaim. The only thing it gets so far is marketing hype and expectations about the potential of the hardware.

The software is any app or game that exploits the available hardware. And that can be either from MS or some other company.

Removing Natal's ability to detect depth, all you are left with is simply any camera and a microphone. And that alone wouldnt have made people excited about the potential.

Having a standardized set of speech, directional audio, motion, depth, video and gamepad controls for developers to use is what makes Natal interesting.

True, any developer could have done a lot of this on their own - and to an extent many developers have done individual parts themselves - but they have almost always been fairly mediocre and (likely) cost a lot of time and money to develop. Often requiring additional hardware as well.

The point is, Natal makes these features available for any game to use, with staggeringly lower cost for developers compared to developing it themselves.

You can see parallels with the DS / DSi. Other systems have had similar features as addons, but by having a standard set of complementary features which a developer can choose to use - then we start to see the weird and risky games come along and expand the market. Games that would otherwise be financially infeasible.
Just look at Brain training, it has sold something like 40 million copies!

patsu

09-Jun-2010, 14:34

I don't exactly disagree with this PoV - however, it has been pointed out that the library used is very close to the Wii so any games that will also appear on the Wii should have Move support along with PS3 exclusives (as I'm sure Sony will push for games to support it).

Yes, borrowing/stealing control schemes from Wii may help. However on Wii, the gamers have no other choice. On PS3, they can always fallback on the familiar DS3 (if the game allows them to).

SIXAXIS was a different scenario, it was one of a kind on a new machine that wasn't selling too well.

If SIXAXIS motion control helped to improve say... FPS accuracy or response time, it would have a following of supporters regardless of whether it's one of a kind, or whether the machine was selling well. Most people who liked SIXAXIS talked about "non-traditional" mechanisms like Folklore and Flower. SIXAXIS steering is just about the only mainstream scheme since it resembles real life driving.

Having a standardized set of speech, directional audio, motion, depth, video and gamepad controls for developers to use is what makes Natal interesting.

True, any developer could have done a lot of this on their own - and to an extent many developers have done individual parts themselves - but they have almost always been fairly mediocre and (likely) cost a lot of time and money to develop. Often requiring additional hardware as well.

The point is, Natal makes these features available for any game to use, with staggeringly lower cost for developers, compared to developing it themselves.

Yap, once the boundaries are known, the developers can toy with it to optimize the experience.

At least for me. :) I'd love to get some hands on time with the server farm they are using to develope the algorithms that Natal will be using to interpret, recognize, and differentiate multiple moving people with intermixed and obscured limbs.

Why does it need a server farm ?

Prophecy2k

09-Jun-2010, 16:31

Rolf N

09-Jun-2010, 16:44

Having a standardized set of speech, directional audio, motion, depth, video and gamepad controls for developers to use is what makes Natal interesting.Speech is only partitioned away into the Natal umbrella to make that more appealing. On a technical level, there's no reason to limit its reach that way. Every Xbox 360 comes with a headset.

patsu

09-Jun-2010, 17:29

I'd guess to compute the myriad of various different spacial orientations of different sizes of human forms in various different positions.... lots and lots of data that will become the basis of what Natal uses to recognise human positions

Yeah, I was thinking they may send the raw data to the server side to "compile" and collate, then send the summarized result down to Natal/360 for on-the-fly recognition. This would make good use of the XBL servers.

[Not sure if the heuristics result will converge this early or at all though :twisted:]

Speech is only partitioned away into the Natal umbrella to make that more appealing. On a technical level, there's no reason to limit its reach that way. Every Xbox 360 comes with a headset.

I think a directional audio toolkit may be good for pinpointing sound source, limited voice recognition, and perhaps 3D audio (output) ? ^_^

EDIT:
If Milo is going to be @ E3, MS will definitely follow up with something close or more impressive than the last demo (regardless if the headset will work better).

Love_In_Rio

09-Jun-2010, 19:31

patsu

09-Jun-2010, 20:01

I don't know whether it's a little training or not to start. May be the depth info can speed this up.

If I remember correctly, ASIMO and AIBO use one or two normal cameras to implement their object recognition subsystem.

EDIT:
Found an AIBO link + computer cluster for training:
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~fjseins/isis/aibodemo.html

Short movie showing the Aibo Object Recognition GUI, in which the 'learning' phase is performed for one object, while being connected to four cluster computers in Europe and one in Australia.

I remember Microsoft has an extensive cloud computing platform in several countries. e.g., The one in Singapore can be used by developers to get public data such as weather condition.

AzBat

09-Jun-2010, 22:44

Every Xbox 360 comes with a headset.

OK, I've seen this statement made by 2 different people, but it don't make it true. Every 360 does NOT come with a headset. In fact, the Core and Arcade SKUs have NEVER came with a headset. Only the Pro/Premium and Elite SKUs have included the wired headsets.

You can go back to your originally scheduled broadcast. :)

Tommy McClain

Silent_Buddha

09-Jun-2010, 23:44

Yeah, I was thinking they may send the raw data to the server side to "compile" and collate, then send the summarized result down to Natal/360 for on-the-fly recognition. This would make good use of the XBL servers.

Not in the plans at least from what I've read. It's about what Prophecy2k said. I linked to an aritcle about it a few months ago either in this thread or one of the other motion control threads. I'm about to head off to work now, so can't look it up to relink it.

It's basically feeding lots and lots (millions and millions) of static images of people in motion from which the cluster "learns" to predict where each skeletal point is (in 3 dimensions) whether it is visible or not.

Then it comes up with a probability matrix of where the skeletal point is, then uses an algorithm to determine which point to use. Early skeletal tracking systems that were used when demo'ing Natal showed something like the 5 or 10 most probable locations in realtime. So when watching the skeletal tracking it would seem to flicker and jerk a bit. The final output would only be the one chosen however.

Regards,
SB

patsu

10-Jun-2010, 01:16

OK, I've seen this statement made by 2 different people, but it don't make it true. Every 360 does NOT come with a headset. In fact, the Core and Arcade SKUs have NEVER came with a headset. Only the Pro/Premium and Elite SKUs have included the wired headsets.

I see. I think it still make sense since we were talking about speech recognition for core gaming (which should be mostly Pro/Premium and Elite folks).

Not in the plans at least from what I've read. It's about what Prophecy2k said. I linked to an aritcle about it a few months ago either in this thread or one of the other motion control threads. I'm about to head off to work now, so can't look it up to relink it.

It's basically feeding lots and lots (millions and millions) of static images of people in motion from which the cluster "learns" to predict where each skeletal point is (in 3 dimensions) whether it is visible or not.

Then it comes up with a probability matrix of where the skeletal point is, then uses an algorithm to determine which point to use. Early skeletal tracking systems that were used when demo'ing Natal showed something like the 5 or 10 most probable locations in realtime. So when watching the skeletal tracking it would seem to flicker and jerk a bit. The final output would only be the one chosen however.

That's the skeleton tracking part.

In his Youtube Milo presentation above, Peter Molyneux also talks about 3D object recognition and using the online portion to continue to learn new objects.

These have been done before, but if MS can tidy up the toolkits as well as making the databases available to all game developers, it would be a powerful platform -- like Google vending GIS data, Facebook vending social data, Amazon vending product catalog, etc. In this sense, it would be an integrated network services + easy-to-use natural interface platform for app development. Much higher level and defensible than mere "higher precision motion controller hardware" pitch.

LightHeaven

10-Jun-2010, 06:28

Natal couldn't do that.Tracking is far from being acurate enough.

Not enough accurate from this close of the screen? I really doubt it, and i think it would have a response time advantage over that muscle setup (there's quite a delay in that video).

Off course, if you are talking about having an entire 4-people band playing with natal than i agree with you.

whome0

10-Jun-2010, 08:41

PS Move Developer Diary: The Shoot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D28qQkrJRes)
PSEye camera tracks player's head to dodge missiles.

Anton Mikhailov interview (http://www.gamexplain.com/article-72-1272999307-playstation-move-xplained-an-interview-with-anton-mikhailov.html)

Q: I know the Wii Remote (with MotionPlus) uses MEMS technology, what about the Move controller? I had read an interview saying that the Wand uses integrated circuits instead…
A: Our controller also uses MEMS technology. MEMS is a fancy term for a machine built into an integrated circuit.

Q: I had also heard some discussion that since the EyeToy is only 120 Hz and the Wiimote camera is 12 MHz that PlayStation Move might not be best suited for picking up the quick motions.
A: Cameras aren’t the only things that allow us to do fast motion. The accelerometers and gyros are very important for this as well. On the Dualshock 3, the motion tracking was up to about 300 degrees per second while on Move, it’s around 2500. It’s really hard to move faster than that without hurting yourself.

Not all MEMS tech is made the same. They're just chips, and ours have quite a bit of improvement. This means that we can track fast motions as well as slow ones.

The simplest way to sum this up is that PlayStation Move is what is known in academia as a 6DOF tracker. This means that it tracks 6 "degrees of freedom" 'absolutely' (3 position -XYZ, 3 angle). The Wii is an "inertial tracker," which means it tracks position relatively.

goonergaz

10-Jun-2010, 10:11

Yes, borrowing/stealing control schemes from Wii may help. However on Wii, the gamers have no other choice. On PS3, they can always fallback on the familiar DS3 (if the game allows them to).

Sony have the best of both worlds...maybe they should Sign up Hannah Montana to front their campaign!? :| lol

Seriously tho it would be nice to have both options, that way you get to choose what you prefer.

Rangers

10-Jun-2010, 10:46

Huh, apparently natal is not going to be called "Wave" but something else. Six letters is all my source will say.

Arwin

10-Jun-2010, 10:47

PS Move Developer Diary: The Shoot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D28qQkrJRes)
PSEye camera tracks player's head to dodge missiles.

Interesting, because I think this title is also going to be 3D. Adds up nicely!

Billy Idol

10-Jun-2010, 12:08

Sony have the best of both worlds...maybe they should Sign up Hannah Montana to front their campaign

it is said/embarrassing that I understand this joke :oops:
:lol::lol:

obonicus

10-Jun-2010, 13:24

Huh, apparently natal is not going to be called "Wave" but something else. Six letters is all my source will say.
Natale?

Shifty Geezer

10-Jun-2010, 14:37

Wiggle

patsu

10-Jun-2010, 14:51

it is said/embarrassing that I understand this joke :oops:
:lol::lol:

I don't get the joke. :-(
Please enlighten.

patsu

10-Jun-2010, 14:54

Huh, apparently natal is not going to be called "Wave" but something else. Six letters is all my source will say.

Good !

The wave motion and that "wavy design" explanation don't stick at all.

Sony should change theirs too.

Might I suggest... Microsoft/Sony Woohoo to fight Wii ?
Double the letters, double the goodness.

patsu

10-Jun-2010, 19:38

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28904/Study_Purchase_Intent_For_PlayStation_Move_Natal_B elow_10_Percent.php

Research firm OTX's U.S. tracking study GamePlan Insights polled a group of 2,000 gamers between May 23 and June 5, 2010, and found that 8 percent of the Xbox 360 market intends to buy Natal, and 6 percent of the PlayStation 3 market intends to purchase Move.

Of the people that are already planning on buying Natal and Move, 25 percent plan to preorder the controllers.

The low purchase intent figures reflect the current lack of information about compatible games for the devices. Microsoft and Sony are expected to reveal more motion-compatible games at next week's E3 event in L.A., where the controllers will be a central attraction, after which purchase intent may rise.

It's more than lack of info. Sony released a bunch of details about PS Move, but the existing gamers may not be taken by a Wii-like experience.

ErnstH

10-Jun-2010, 21:23

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28904/Study_Purchase_Intent_For_PlayStation_Move_Natal_B elow_10_Percent.php

It's more than lack of info. Sony released a bunch of details about PS Move, but the existing gamers may not be taken by a Wii-like experience.

Well, 8% of 40 million is 3.2 million units, assuming demand is similar worldwide. So, if they start bundling Natal with every new unit from launch onward, 10 million should be reached shortly (somewhere in 2011).

PS move figures should be similar.

BadTB25

10-Jun-2010, 22:47

Huh, apparently natal is not going to be called "Wave" but something else. Six letters is all my source will say.

MS Wave

boommoob1

10-Jun-2010, 23:54

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28904/Study_Purchase_Intent_For_PlayStation_Move_Natal_B elow_10_Percent.php

It's more than lack of info. Sony released a bunch of details about PS Move, but the existing gamers may not be taken by a Wii-like experience.The software will determine it's success.

But still surprised and scratching my head as to why they didnt go the camera route after playing around with it for several years. MS and the media are claiming innovation from Natal.:roll: But Yoshida says that decision came from SCEWWS, so we'l have to see what software they come up with.

TheChefO

11-Jun-2010, 00:01

Huh, apparently natal is not going to be called "Wave" but something else. Six letters is all my source will say.

Microsoft Motion.

Yep.

AzBat

11-Jun-2010, 00:23

Microsoft Motion.

Yep.

Lord I hope not. Rather have Wave.

What about Flooid? LOL

Tommy McClain

AzBat

11-Jun-2010, 01:31

LA Times gets a few more Natal demos...

iver Rush: What Shaun White would want in real-life river rafting, players instead can indulge in the vicarious thrill on their living room rug. Steering a virtual raft past waterfalls, rocks and other obstacles requires lots of jumping and leaning. The graphics are similar to what you'd find in snowboarding games, with giant visual cues telling players where they can go so they won't get lost. The mini-game is designed to encourage anyone to jump in and play without having to read a manual.

Ricochet: Prepare to break a sweat. Players use their arms, legs, feet and head to block a frantic barrage of soccer-sized balls. Microsoft showed an early version of this game during last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo. The latest iteration lets two people play simultaneously. Using facial recognition software, the camera checks who is playing and pulls up their personal avatars on the screen. The feature would, for example, let parents control which games their kids can play. If the console sees that the person playing is associated with a profile with parental controls, it will restrict the types of games that can be played.

Living Statue: One small step for Xbox, one giant leap for Microsoft's social media strategy. This game lets players record their avatars dancing and singing karaoke-style, then e-mail the video masterpiece to their friends. The company has long nurtured its ambitions for its Xbox Live online game service, which has 23 million active users, to become a virtual watering hole for people who play video games. Living Statue is the latest attempt to encourage its players to check into Xbox Live and make friends.

Obstacle Course: This imaginatively named title is exactly what it suggests. Players pull, dodge and jump their way through a series of levels resembling what you would find at summer camp, sans the mosquitoes.

In addition, there will be about a dozen more Natal-licensed titles from other game developers unveiled Monday and Tuesday, but Microsoft has forbidden the publishers from uttering a word about them until after its own news conference Monday morning.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-microsoft-20100613,0,5750062.story

Living Statue sounds like something Rare might be working on according to what Mundo Rare posted...

What’s worth mentioning regarding that line is a recent article from IGN; the theory they have is that the “One in a million” line connects with a recent Microsoft promotion. On Facebook, Microsoft is allowing users to download free music from Xbox as thanks for reaching one million users. The theory is that Rare’s next game will be something akin to Facebook, in which it’ll “allow your Avatar to interact” with other friends.

http://mundorare.com/news/2010/06/rares-teaser-website-is-online/

Tommy McClain

(((interference)))

11-Jun-2010, 01:48

Huh, apparently natal is not going to be called "Wave" but something else. Six letters is all my source will say.

Microsoft Motion? (which is better than Wave) Xbox 360 Active?

And from the Gamasutra article it's interesting to see that Natal is appealing to the 360's hardcore crowd while Move is not - with games like Socom, KZ3 etc featuring Move support you'd expect it to be the opposite - especially when the only thing demoed for Natal is Ricochet!

As well, a smaller percentage of PS3 owners is interested in Move than 360 owners in Natal, which doesn't bode well for Sony as they should be in front seeing how they've actually been demoing the system and games for a couple of months now.

boommoob1

11-Jun-2010, 02:24

Microsoft Motion? (which is better than Wave) Xbox 360 Active?

And from the Gamasutra article it's interesting to see that Natal is appealing to the 360's hardcore crowd while Move is not - with games like Socom, KZ3 etc featuring Move support you'd expect it to be the opposite - especially when the only thing demoed for Natal is Ricochet!

As well, a smaller percentage of PS3 owners is interested in Move than 360 owners in Natal, which doesn't bode well for Sony as they should be in front seeing how they've actually been demoing the system and games for a couple of months now.MS have spent a very large amount of marketing dollars. Nothing should be taken at face value. I'd be very surprised if the millions of macho Halo addicts are waiting for Natal and it's casual games.

(((interference)))

11-Jun-2010, 02:29

MS have spent a very large amount of marketing dollars. Nothing should be taken at face value. I'd be very surprised if the millions of macho Halo addicts are waiting for Natal and it's casual games.

So are you saying that MS stacked the survey?

If they are spending lots of marketing money, it's clearly working as a larger proportion of 360 owners already intend to purchase Natal - despite the fact that we've basically seen nothing of it! And it appears to be core 360 gamers too.

So much for Sony trying to go for the core gamer audience with Move - the survey would indicate that somehow they've been trumped by arm flailing crap like Ricochet!
It makes no sense

patsu

11-Jun-2010, 02:48

So are you saying that MS stacked the survey?

If they are spending lots of marketing money, it's clearly working as a larger proportion of 360 owners already intend to purchase Natal - despite the fact that we've basically seen nothing of it! And it appears to be core 360 gamers too.

These are likely the early adoptors. They are excited by the technology and can see the potential.

So much for Sony trying to go for the core gamer audience with Move - the survey would indicate that somehow they've been trumped by arm flailing crap like Ricochet!
It makes no sense

The "flailing crap like Ricochet" may be why the initial interest level for Natal remains low. It has nothing to do with PS Move.

OTOH, PS Move's low initial interest may be due to its similarity to Wii experience (e.g., Socom 4 is similar to Wii FPS, Sports Championship is similar to Wii Sports Resort, etc.). If you look at the PS Move top 5 game interests, it may imply that some of them already own a Wii. Looking at the existing demoes, they may not feel the need to upgrade. In fact, they might be mad at the duplicated effort.

The challenge for Sony will be to differentiate from Wii. But judging by recent exec interviews, it is possible that they may not have the unique games ready yet. We will find out in E3.

boommoob1

11-Jun-2010, 03:30

Crossbar

11-Jun-2010, 07:40

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20100610PD216.html
Taiwan-based Chicony Electronics is expected to benefit from Microsoft Xbox 360's Natal Project by supplying power supplies and webcam modules, and already started shipping in June, according to market watchers.

Chicony declined to comment, but pointed out that third-quarter consolidated revenues should increase 20-30% sequentially on strong power supply shipments.

I predict a late October or November release of Natal.

I wonder if it is correct that Natal will require a separate power supply or if the power supply is intended for the new slim 360 model? Do we have any information on this.

Shifty Geezer

11-Jun-2010, 09:03

But still surprised and scratching my head as to why they didnt go the camera route...It costs $150, and they'd still need a controller for accuracy, response time and interface.

dragonelite

11-Jun-2010, 11:59

Got this from neogaf so dont know if this is posted already but at the end they do hint at project natal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6YTQJVzwlI

Prophecy2k

11-Jun-2010, 13:24

These are likely the early adoptors. They are excited by the technology and can see the potential.

The "flailing crap like Ricochet" may be why the initial interest level for Natal remains low. It has nothing to do with PS Move.

OTOH, PS Move's low initial interest may be due to its similarity to Wii experience (e.g., Socom 4 is similar to Wii FPS, Sports Championship is similar to Wii Sports Resort, etc.). If you look at the PS Move top 5 game interests, it may imply that some of them already own a Wii. Looking at the existing demoes, they may not feel the need to upgrade. In fact, they might be mad at the duplicated effort.

The challenge for Sony will be to differentiate from Wii. But judging by recent exec interviews, it is possible that they may not have the unique games ready yet. We will find out in E3.

I'd agree in part as i assume that the majority of 360 users intending to purchase Natal are excited by the technology and have alot of faith (misplaced or not - we'll have to wait and see) in their ability to tailor the "right" software to their product.

I also agree that Sony hasn't really shown anything that meaningfully differentiates move from what Nintendo is offering with the Wii.

On the other hand i would say that in some ways i don't really believe that Sony needs to invest too much in marketing Move as something other than a Wii-like experience. At the end of the day there are 70+million households in the world who enjoy the Wii experience, and come this fall Sony will be the only platform holder able to offer both a similar and familiar Wii-like experience, alongside the big HD graphics and amazing core games that they're pumping out.

Sony doesn't really need to capture the hardcore or worry too much about differentiating their product in my view, so long as they with their stable of top-teir world-class devs can produce compelling software for Move that can't be found anywhere else, and can appeal to both the core and casual gamer, then I believe that Move will find some good success.

Technologically however, Move IS inherently a rather different product than the Wii-mote and therefore regardless of what happens, it will only be a matter of time before the creative minds in the industry start making really unique and compelling software.

I also don't place too much stock in these consumer interest surveys... ;-)

Arwin

11-Jun-2010, 17:08

Crossbar

11-Jun-2010, 17:17

I'm pretty sure more than 90% of people barely know Natal and Move exist at this point. [/url]

So true, hardly any of the current console owners know about them.

According to the report, only 15 per cent of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 market is aware of the devices.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/study-shows-low-consumer-interest-for-motion-control

patsu

11-Jun-2010, 17:22

I also don't place too much stock in these consumer interest surveys... ;-)

There may not be sufficient info or incentive to answer properly.

On the other hand i would say that in some ways i don't really believe that Sony needs to invest too much in marketing Move as something other than a Wii-like experience. At the end of the day there are 70+million households in the world who enjoy the Wii experience, and come this fall Sony will be the only platform holder able to offer both a similar and familiar Wii-like experience, alongside the big HD graphics and amazing core games that they're pumping out.

In my view, which may very well be downright wrong...

If that's the case, they are only selling largely to existing PS3 owners. They'd need to excite people to buy a new PS3 vs buying one more Wii game. Without a strong draw, existing Wii owners are likely to have more faith in Nintendo products because their products are more familiar and have more mindshare (switching cost is quite high).

The possible push factors are HD and software library (for older kids/adults). I think Sony mentioned that about 10-20% of Nintendo console owners "upgraded" to Sony consoles last gens.

For these upgraders and potential new customers in fall 2010, Sony will need to differentiate from Natal. If Natal can inspire the consumers more, Sony will lag. This would be a pure marketing battle, followed by how good the experience is after sales.

Looking at how MS executes, they have been targeting the mass consumers while Sony continues to target existing gamers and technophiles (with tech demoes and articles). Coupled with the inherently more drastic experiences, MS may have already won the marketing war for casuals -- unless Sony pulls out something out of the left field in E3.

Sony's 3D push will appeal only to core gamers and technophiles, and later, general consumers over a longer time horizon. In the same vein, Blu-ray will do the same for more consumers. In other words, Sony is taking a marathon approach again. It seems that as long as they continue to be profitable and grow a satisfied user base, I think they may be contented.

Sony doesn't really need to capture the hardcore or worry too much about differentiating their product in my view, so long as they with their stable of top-teir world-class devs can produce compelling software for Move that can't be found anywhere else, and can appeal to both the core and casual gamer, then I believe that Move will find some good success.

Yes, this is the after sales and word of mouth part though. They will be subjected to MS's marketing blitz and if not careful, they will be branded as an inferior or outdated tech (together with Wii) regardless of the actual offerings.

Technologically however, Move IS inherently a rather different product than the Wii-mote and therefore regardless of what happens, it will only be a matter of time before the creative minds in the industry start making really unique and compelling software.

Most consumers simply see a wagging stick and their favorite casual games. From this perspective, if Sony doesn't show anything new and big, they may be perceived as a "Just like Wii" HD console even if it's inherently a rather different product.

EDIT:
Sony's 3D move will set PS3 apart as a future-proof console again though. Would have preferred Sony to focus on just one thing.

patsu

11-Jun-2010, 17:31

Fast Company has an article on the history of Move:
http://www.fastcompany.com/article/richard-marks-playstation-move-eyetoy

At next week's E3 conference Sony will unveil the launch details and games for its answer to motion-control gaming, the PlayStation Move. But it isn't Sony's first foray into movement interfaces. PlayStation Move creator Richard Marks discusses the making of the EyeToy and subsequent PlayStation Eye cameras.

Talks about PSEye...

Probably trying to inform people about its camera capability (3-5 years too late !), and convince people that Move is not an Wii imitator. It's useful but won't be a game changer without showing people a hit software that clearly has not been done on Wii (and Natal). If Nintendo has another run away success in the mean time, Sony will appear to need to play catch up again.

It will take a long time and a lot of work to convince people otherwise. It cannot be done by PR articles alone.

Shifty Geezer

11-Jun-2010, 17:49

I'm pretty sure more than 90% of people barely know Natal and Move exist at this point.

Unrelated, but on GAF someone pointed to this video. It's someone who managed to replicate Move functionality on the PC. He has some interesting stuff in there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-yR5ozxw4E
Interesting stuff, a hodge=podge od systems. The hand tracking is impressive, and shows what you can do with image-only based tracking as long as you have enough detail (camera close to hand, sufficient background contrast). I think mostly he's recreated Move using the illuminated sphere, and the resultant ideas of the adventure game, rummaging around the room, are certainly appealing. It does highlight some possibilities for how motion can go beyond Wii waggle.

patsu

11-Jun-2010, 21:30

Fast Company has an article on the history of Move:
http://www.fastcompany.com/article/richard-marks-playstation-move-eyetoy

Apparently, the article has some interesting tidbits:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=21719264&postcount=801

Around this time, martial artist Jet Li was touring our SCEA offices, so I showed him several demos. As I showed him how EyeToy and color tracking could be used to control a virtual sword by moving a physical toy sword, he took the sword from my hand and proceeded to spin and twirl it insanely fast, smiling the entire time.

On seeing in the dark:

When PlayStation 3 launched, because it has more computation power than PlayStation 2, algorithms that were previously too "heavy" became possible (e.g. real-time face detection, dense feature tracking, etc.). The EyeToy was upgraded to a new camera device named PlayStation Eye, with four times the resolution of the original EyeToy. PlayStation Eye also transmits raw uncompressed video to PS3, thereby avoiding compression artifacts. And it has much better low-light sensitivity: Late one night, while I was testing a PlayStation Eye prototype with all the office lights off, I was puzzled to still see live video of myself. I then realized that the prototype was so sensitive that just the light given off by my PC screen was sufficient for it to image my face! (Soon thereafter, we filed a patent for techniques to use a TV screen as a controllable light source).

On interesting Move ideas:

The PlayStation Move combines all that was good about the EyeToy and PlayStation Eye experiences with the benefits of a traditional game controller. The combination of motion-based gaming and controller input means PlayStation Move can support all types of genres, from shooters to social games. The developers who are supporting PlayStation Move have some amazing ideas for games that take advantage of options such as augmented reality; some of those ideas were demonstrated at the Game Developers Conference in March, but there are plenty more that will be unveiled at E3 next week.