Peter Moore is all for Project Natal and Sony’s motion controller, with the publishing giant having enjoyed ”several months” of being in the know.
EA Sports are exploring ”opportunities” for their licensed and fitness properties. Moore asks do we need something physical to ”counter-balance your movement” with gesture control?
”We’ve seen both Natal and the motion controller from Sony several months ago,” Moore tells Gamasutra, ”so we’re already looking at opportunities to bring both our licensed product and our fitness product to these new controller mechanisms.”
”The Challenge with gesture control is yes, do you need “something?” asked the EA Sports boss. ”That’s always the thing, we’ve looked at these things for many years. Do you need something to counter-balance your movement, as we do in a golf game, you typically need a club, or a racket or a baseball bat. Do you need that?”
Some situations may feel better with something in your hand, but games like Fight Night would tremendously benefit from Natal’s objectless interface.
”We’re constantly evaluating,” he adds, ”and I think what you’ve got to do with Natal in particular is you’ve got to come up with new experiences that feel natural without something being held or something on your body. And that’s going to be the key to successful software for Natal.”
A good example would be Tony Hawk Ride from Activision, which comes with a skateboard peripheral. Would it feel too ‘weird’ to play such a game without a pretend board beneath the gamer? The kid in the Natal demo seemed fine with it but then again that was all staged…
