THQ will support Project NATAL & PS3 motion-sensing devices from day one
THQ is prepared to support the latest motion-sensing devices for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 from the day they hit store shelves, in a new initiative by the company to provide users of these future products (not to mention the Wii’s motion-sensing Wii Remote & Nunchuck) with quality software.
And not only do they plan to support the PS3’s “Wand” Motion Controllers and the Xbox 360’s “Project NATAL” motion-sensing camera, but they intend to do so in a quality way that will bring “something new” and fresh to each system independantly with games built from the ground up to support the accessories.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, THQ said this:
“We’re not going to just port stuff over, each one of those platforms needs a lot of design love. But I don’t want to just splay stuff across because people will only play it once and not bother again. It’s got to be a great Natal game, or a great Sony game, or a great Wii game. Consumers are smart, they won’t be fooled by that.”
Via GamesIndustry.biz, thanks to itechnews for the image
11 July 2009 03:48The Judge
This better happen. I am an Xbox fan, but the wand controller demonstration at E3 was so impressive that I seriously considered purchasing a PS3 that day. Then I decided I would wait to make sure it wouldn’t end up being largely for casuals, which is obviously very likely. It has great potential, however, and I am looking forward to see what they come up with. Hopefully not stupid games that are exclusively things like bowling, or archery, or exclusively mini-games. Hopefully they will get to great quality really rapidly. Imagine an open world game where you stand up and walk around the room and point at things on the horizon and pull back and the screen zooms in without you having to click a button and you fire, but in an open world game. An open world game where when you come across puzzles you can write answers out or make paths yourself, or, depending on the genre, you can do things like manual graffiti, but all in the context of an open world. Imagine a Bethesda game with that technology. If it ends up being only for casuals, I will literally stop playing video games, because with the recent realizations that Half-Life has become vaporware and that Darkfall sucks and that you can spend more than half a hundred dollars on a game that cost many millions and still be frustrated by the amount of bugs and simple errors that really shouldn’t be there (such as in Far Cry 2 when you sneak up behind an enemy, only to notice that when he starts shooting into the forest, he forgot to turn his body toward you but you are still taking damage from invisible bullets, I have really lost hope in the video game market. I know I am not alone. I go to Cornell, for God’s sake, I love the idea of a virtual world, I think in the future the application could reach beyond simple entertainment and could become a research simulator as a tool, or a social science theory testing service with advanced AI, or even just a near-perfect replication of real-life to test how hard it would be to steal a car using actual realistic controls and physics and such. My roommate at Cornell does not play many video games, besides Fallout 3 and GTA4, because I convinced him, for the simulation that they provide, but he agrees with me that the possibilities are endless. Please, do relevant things with the wand controller. Please spell-check your codes. And please realize that the games that are the most like simulations, the ones with open worlds and advanced AI and accurate physics and the like, from Fallout 3 to GTA4, are always the very best sellers. Sure, they take more time and money to develop, but those sort of games develop fan-bases that only grow, that never deplete. Expansions for those sorts of games are gobbled up, and full-blown sequels for those kind of quality games sell a ridiculously large increase from the preceding game. I know that I am not in the business, but I am majoring in economics and media studies, and I do still know what I am talking about. Just the length of this comment alone should show you how passionate hardcore gamers can really be. I care at a pretty profound level, because I am worried that the Wii and other casual games that do not promote technological advances will always prevail in the market simply because they are being made at a more rapid rate and because they have larger budgets for advertising because the companies only have faith in the simply and unambitious games. If the same advertising that large casual games get went into a well-received game that gamers will genuinely appreciate beyond casual entertainment, those great games would sell at a ridiculous scale. (It is very late and I am tired so I am stopping, but I also wanted to point out that when good games, and you can use Half Life or even Bethesda games as evidence, have sequels made, they always do much, much better in the market and from the critics when they have a completely new engine. Left 4 Dead 2 will not sell as much as it would have if they decided to wait until they had significant changes beyond just more variants on gore and characters…if there was a new engine and a whole new element to gameplay, it wouldn’t appear to buyers to be just an expensive expansion pack, which is what L4D2 basically is. Same with Bethesda games. While Fallout 3 is my favorite game, people associate it more with Oblivion than with Fallout 2, and so the fact that the engine was the same between Oblivion and Fallout 3, people saw less icentive to purchase the game. Whenever a new game comes out with the same engine, it really does only look like a variation on the last game. Like “Oblivion with guns.” Which was a fair assumption for buyers to make because the lack of an updated engine. The next Fallout or Elder Scrolls [obviously not including Mothership Zeta or other expansions] should have a completely new engine. People don’t mind waiting for the next gen. If we wait that long for the next game, we know that that much more energy and time went into not only the expanded engine and abilities but also significant amounts of more time went into the things that make most decent sequels, such as more weapons and characters and space and cities, etc, etc. This applies to whatever GTA5 will be. Although, the difference in tone between GTA4 and Red Dead Redemption is significant enough that a new engine isn’t even necessary, but this is an exception because the western genre is so deprived of good games that such an ambitious and beautiful undertaking for the genre, even with its lack of a new engine, is an undertaking relevant enough that it is not only unique but it is relieving to see something so fresh approaching, riding out of the sunset, claiming victory of freedom like some lost cry from the depths of the likes of Blood Meridian. Night.)
