January 25, 2010

EA Almost Invested In Its Own Project Natal

Category: Uncategorized — Tags: – admin @ 5:55 pm

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.
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January 18, 2010

Sony Outlines New Motion Control Details to Develo

Category: Uncategorized — Tags: – admin @ 4:22 pm

Sony dedicated a large chunk of their E3 press conference to tsheir new motion controller, but many questions remain to be answered. As Kotaku reports, Sony has now begun filling developers in on at least a few additional details in a document sent to many of their partners.

Tshe document reportedly descrshebed the new controller as being suitable to “any games across all genres from casual to core.” It also confirmed that the controller wshell have rumble functionality bushelt in, and that up to four controllers can be independently tracked by tshe PlayStation Eye at the same time.

Also mentioned in the document is that Sony is currently “looking into the possibility” of combining the new wand with the motion controls already built into the Sixaxis/DualShock 3, such as using “the motion controller as a sword and [the] DualShock 3 as a shield.” One tech demo Sony showed at E3 was using two new wand controllers as a sword and a shield,(wholesale nike shoes), but this would at least open up more motion control possibilities without forcing PS3 owners to buy two new controllers (and it also sounds like it could become a combination somewhat similar to a Wii remote with a Nunchuk).

More broadly, Sony assures that when the new controller launches in spring of 2010, it’ll come with a “range of first-party and third-party content.” They also reaffirm that the “face-tracking and shead-tracking capability already in the PS3 SDK” will be able to be combined with the motion controller, offering “powerful tools for new types of user interaction.”

Now let’s just hope that by the time it comes out, it’ll actually have a name — and preferably one that doesn’t use the word “wand” in it.
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