NATAL support can’t be added to old Xbox 360 titles. Publishers making NATAL games announced
Microsoft was heavily promoting the NATAL Xbox 360 motion-camera at Japan’s Tokyo Game Show 2009.
In addition to showing Natal play demos with Katamari and Space Invaders, Microsoft also revealed a huge list of publishers who are either making Natal-supported games or who are “experimenting” with the device, in addition to having a panel of top-names discussing NATAL.
This included Konami’s Hideo Kojima, Capcom’s Keiji Inafune and Sega’s Toshihiro Nagoshi talking NATAL’s potential. This is significant because these three are some of the biggest game designer’s of Japan, with Hideo Kojima the mastermind behind Metal Gear, Keiji Inafune the guy who brought us Mega Man, Dead Rising and much more and Sega’s Toshihiro Nagoshi the one who brought the Monkey Ball franchise to prominence.
And the list of publisher’s supporting NATAL is quite impressive indeed, it includes:
* Activision Blizzard
* Bethesda
* Epic Games
* Capcom
* Disney Interactive
* Electronic Arts
* Konami
* Bungie
* MTV Games
* Namco Bandai
* Sega
* Square Enix
* THQ
* Ubisoft
“I strongly feel that Project Natal will expand the possibilities of gaming,” said Capcom managing corporate officer Keiji Inafune, cocreator of the Mega Man and Dead Rising series. “Personally, I too am extremely excited about Project Natal. It’s really going to stir up our creative spirits. I think it’s going to bring new ways to play and new surprises to Xbox 360 fans and help further the development of completely original content.”
However making things a bit more complicated for people who may want to purchase the device, is Microsoft’s revelation that existing Xbox 360 titles cannot be patched to support the NATAL. Apparently the motion-sensing technology would require code changes more extensive than any software patch could provide. The only way they could make existing Xbox 360 titles work with NATAL would be to re-release them, kind of like Nintendo has done with its “New Play Control” series of GameCube to Wii re-releases.
Microsoft also released some more interesting details on the device though, like the following:
* The NATAL can distinguish between individual voices from multiple players in the same room.
* The NATAL motion-sensing camera only sees in the Infrared Spectrum of light.
* This allows Natal to work in all lighting conditions and to adjust the in-game playing area to fit players’ gaming rooms. You can even apparently use it in complete darkness.
* To quote: “We can configure the play space around your living room,” explained Tsunoda. “Let’s say you had sofas that were squeezing in this way, we can automatically move the walls of the Ricochet court in. If you don’t have a wall that goes back that far, they can move the wall up. So we can totally customize the play area to the dimensions of your personal play area.”
Exciting stuff.
Via GameSpot
Categories: News, Xbox 360 News
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