With both Project Natal and Sony's motion controller set to launch next year, developers are ramping up their efforts to support the new control schemes. Regarding Microsoft's Natal in particular, numerous publishers and developers seem to be voicing their support for the platform and Japanese designers expressed their excitement during the Tokyo Game Show.
As part of the first-party system at Microsoft Game Studios, Rare no doubt feels some pressure to show just how much fun Natal can be, and the British studio has already said that it finally feels aligned with Microsoft. Microsoft believes that motion controls will become the norm in gaming and its of course looking to its own studios like Rare and Lionhead to prove that point.
That said, Rare appears to be overjoyed to be working on Natal. Speaking to Games TM [thanks NowGamer] during the magazine's trip to Rare's studio in Twycross, Rare's head of design George Andreas talked about the limitations of traditional game controls. “When you work on a conventional controller you reach the limitations of that very, very quickly. From a design perspective you know what it does, you know what the buttons do, and you know how you’re going to interact with the software," he said.
Andreas sees Natal as a new frontier with endless possibilities: "The thing that I’ve personally seen over the last nine or ten months working closely with Natal is that boundary just isn’t anywhere in sight yet. It’s a massive ocean of possibilities and it really is going to open up the mind. At the moment we haven’t got anywhere near the limitations of what that hardware will be able to bring to entertainment in the future... With a great development team you should be able to create any game experience with Natal.”
Also see: Pachter's Podium: Natal Just $50, Will Outsell PlayStation Motion
