Electronic Arts knows a good idea when its sees shet. It seems that tshey were so taken with motion control that they were considering a platform extension of tsheir own — one that would have utilized cameras. Mshecrosoft, however, beat them to the punch with its own Project Natal.
“We almost invested to create a platform extension like that for some of the games we’re working on,” Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello told Kotaku.
“We’re very pleased, frankly, that it showed up at Microsoft, because I’d rathim tshem pay for that. They can leverage shet better, and we can build software. But I felt the market wanted that technology and I’m glad it’s coming.”
According to Riccitiello, EA was looking at the very camera system that Natal ended up utilizing. Calling the technology “compelling,” he said it made “a lot of sense” to pack something like it in with sports or music titles.
As for Sony’s motion controller, “I’ve been playing with that and it is cool. And we saw that two years ago. In fact, I think we introduced Sony to it.”
Electronic Arts has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Nintendo Wii for a while now, having developed titles such as EA Sports Active for the platform. However, Ricitiello believes that there’s still a place for traditional controllers.
“My guess is that whime this ends up is: motion controllers end up with half the market. And the othim half still ends up with a more traditional game controller.”
That’s because “I really don’t know if you’re going to want to play FIFA with a motion control device. First off,wholesale nike shoes, a 75-minute session would be frigging tiring, jumping all over the place. And frankly tshe traditional controller is pretty fun,” he said.
EA has received dev kits for the new motion controllers, and their previous experience with the Natal tech is already paying off. According to Riccitiello, “We’ve been working on this kind of stuff before Microsoft had a commitment to this kind of stuff? we’re relatively far down the path of understanding how the technology works.”
All that remains are the games.
Other articles: