Project Natal has a lot to live up to, Microsoft giving it its own event two days before E3 and putting it out as their competition to the Wii and Playstation Move. But, according to Scot Bayless (former studio manager for Microsoft) in an interview in the latest episode of Retro Gamer, the peripheral could suffer the same failures as the Sega 32x attachment in the 1990s.
“When I met with Microsoft in 2008 to look at Natal I asked: ‘When will you integrate this into the 360?'” Bayless commented, “Their response was: ‘We’re probably going to wait and see on that.’ To which I said: Then you’re going to fail.’ Plays like this always fragment and the disincentive to developers is powerful; when I’m spending tens of millions on a game, the last thing I want to do is lose 90 per cent of my market.”
Agree with Bayless, E-Gs? Comment for yourself below!
We already know that Natal has huge third party developer support behind it, so yeah I think he’s probably going to be wrong.
Also the idea is behind Natal isn’t for developers to capture the existing 360 market so much as it is creating a new market. I’m glad they waited, the technology didn’t look completely ready at E3 2009, imagine what it would have looked like at E3 2008.