Slashdot Mirror
Epic Sticking With Classic Controllers For Now
Cliff Bleszinski, design director for Epic Games, said in an interview with Develop that while motion control schemes like Project Natal look interesting, Epic will probably be sticking with classic controllers "for the foreseeable future." He said, "Microsoft came down a few weeks before E3 and gave us a demo, and they're now shipping out the dev kits; I think it's great. When you start combining the motion-capture, the facial recognition, and the vocal recognition you can create some unique experiences. And of course more accessibility is always a good thing. When you build an interface like that though you need to [specifically] design a game for it. It can't just be tacked on."
All Epic is saying that the game ideas that they have and/or are planning on developing weren't designed for Natal, and that Natal games should be designed with Natal in mind. Basically, they don't want to be attributed to alot of the flops that will jump on a new gimmick controller.
But once a developer comes along and says, "Hey, I've got a great idea and Natal is the perfect tool to implement it" - it'll take off.
Epic has never done anything new. Anything in UT, GoW, whatever, its all been done before and Epic just did it better.
And Natal will be the same as the Wii controller. Would gamers consider it fail? Probably a little, it aims itself to casual games, has alot of experiences of being finicky and frustrating, and can be mastered on the couch.
But guess what - it sold, it still sells, and alot of people enjoy it, people who weren't gamers before. Mario Kart? Designed for Wiimote - done right.
Now Natal needs something like that, a first party developer for the X-box, and then we'll see Epic jump on board. I have very few doubts.