With the emergence of Project Natal some may think your standard controller is no longer as welcome anymore, wrong. Microsoft loves their 360 controllers.
Natal adds to the platform, it doesn’t replace anything explains senior VP Don Mattrick. In fact they’re likely to complement one another. He’s giddy over the ‘hardcore gamer’ reaction.
”I think we’ve got the best thumb-based controller ever created,” Mattrick told Edge.
”We’re not going to take anything away. There will be controller-based games. What we’re really doing is adding to our platform; when I think about Natal, I think of it like a Guitar Hero controller - it fits the experience better. There will still be games that use the controller, games that use only Natal, and games that use a combination.”
”Think, you could be playing a game with a controller and have your character react when you instinctively duck out of the way of an explosion, or the ability to throw a grenade with a gesture. I don’t think of Natal as taking anything away, I see it as adding more,” he continued.
”As a creator, I love the potential to do more; I think it’s going to net out a renaissance of new ideas. We haven’t figured it all out, but I see it as additive.”
When getting their hands on Natal the hardcore gamer clique, which tends to be the ”most cynical” in the universe, ”flip out when they try it.” Only a handful of studios had pre-E3 access to Natal, with one of those being Lionhead Studios.
”I’ve known Peter for 20 years and I showed it to him and he thought it was amazing. It’s as simple as that; he has a passion and a creativity that’s honestly unmatched by others,” added Mattrick.
”It’s been a very select group of people who’ve seen it before E3, but we’re rolling it out now to a broader group of studios. We didn’t want to be in the position of having to say “no comment.” That’s not a good place to be.” Indeed it’s not Mattrick, those two words are arsenic to us gamers. Is the Xbox 360 controller a favourite of yours?
