Rumours surfaced on the net overnight that Microsoft's Natal technology was actually developed by Israeli company 3DV Systems, which Microsoft acquired in March. However, Microsoft has swiftly denied the rumours, stating emphatically that the technology was developed "in-house".
3DV Systems developed image sensing technology that enables depth perception and real-time skeletal motion tracking in the same way as Microsoft's Natal concept has been demonstrated to do. The depth perception works using infrared and a principle called "Time of Flight" - similar to generating an ultrasound image, but using light instead.
Microsoft is keen to distance themselves from 3DV Systems, however. When asked in an interview with Eurogamer.net whether Natal was derived from 3DV's technology, Microsoft's Aaron Greenburg flatly stated: "No, we built this in house."
Why acquire 3DV Systems, then? Microsoft's Shane Kim gave VentureBeat a clue: they wanted to avoid a legal confrontation over patents.
"You have to be very aware," Kim said. "We want to ensure that we have great intellectual property protection. You have to have a strong legal approach, and this is not easy stuff. It has to be all buttoned up, legally. We have had a very concerted focus on this."
A ten-year lifecycle
Kim also let on something more about Microsoft's long-term strategy for Xbox 360 - with Natal bolstering the lineup, they're expecting the console to stick around for another six years. Having been in the market for four years already, that would give it a 10-year lifecycle - conveniently matching Sony's stated expectation for the PlayStation 3.
"We firmly believe that the Xbox 360 has a life cycle through 2015," said Kim. "Project Natal is a great innovation. It will work with every Xbox 360 sold. It’s not about pushing more pixels on the screen. It’s about how to break down barriers that stop people from playing games."
Kim claimed Project Natal has "nothing to do with Sony or Nintendo." It's about "getting to the mass market, where controllers are barriers and they’re intimidating. It’s awkward for some people to learn to use a controller. This is really about unleashing a new category of controller-free gaming and entertainment.
"We didn’t want to do something that would be derivative of what Nintendo did with the Wii. That’s been a nice innovation for them but this goes much farther. We’re talking about full-body recognition. It can tell when someone is standing or sitting down. It can tell when something moves in front of you or behind you."
The move to emphasise motion control and the non-gaming mass market, rather than a technological arms race for higher resolutions, polygon counts and frame rates, marks a substantial shift for both Xbox and PlayStation. Nintendo has shown with the Wii that there is a huge potential market for a different kind of gaming device that appeals to a different kind of person than the so-called core gamers who rushed out to get an Xbox 360 to play Halo 3 or Grand Theft Auto IV. Nintendo's Wii Sports has sold more than 45 million copies - that's almost as many copies of a single game as there are owners of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles, combined.
Microsoft's investment in Natal is "substantial," Kim said. "Xbox Live and Natal are fundamental parts of our identity going forward. We will lead in online and lead in natural user interfaces."
Natal and the technologies it is based upon have been in development at Microsoft for a long time, Kim stated. "It’s complex. At Microsoft Research, we’ve had a lot of work going on for a long time. We’ve done a lot of work in natural user interfaces. Voice recognition is one of them. That’s why we have been able to deliver development kits for it this week."
The magic is in the software more than the hardware, according to Kim. "You’re talking about an extraordinary amount of data that has to be processed in real time. You saw the latency was very good yesterday. You can parse voices, recognize faces. It’s complex hardware, even more sophisticated software, and simplified for developers to use it immediately."
Has Sony fumbled with their attempt?
At first glance, Natal looks to have a significant technological edge over the motion controller technology that Sony demonstrated at E3. If Microsoft's assertion that the mass market of supposed technophobes will prefer controllerless gaming is true, then Sony's technology will not help them get ahead of Natal, or Nintendo's Wii.
"This is not tracking points the way that the Wii controller does or Sony’s new controller does," Kim claimed. "It’s tracking your full body movement. That alone is very different. It’s also got voice recognition. It has a multi-array microphone so that it can recognize different voices in a room among the different players. It also recognizes faces."
However, questions remain about how precise its tracking will be, and how practical it will be to play games with no control method but the actions of your body. While it will indeed create opportunities for entirely new types of games that have never been possible before, it may be limited in how it can be applied to the existing types of games that gamers enjoy today. And if it suffers from the same inaccuracy that afflicts Nintendo's Wiimote, core gamers may be put off.
Sony was quick to emphasise their technology's "sub-millimetre" accuracy during their E3 demonstration, and showed how it could be used in a first- or third-person fantasy action game, simulating hacking with swords and firing a virtual bow and arrow. If their technology is more accurate, and more easily applicable to existing games, that could make their technology more appealing to core gamers.
Sony is targeting a early- to mid- 2010 launch for their technology, while Microsoft is tight lipped about pricing and availability for Natal, saying only that it won't be arriving this year. But Kim is not worried about Sony getting the slip on Microsoft.
"We have put the technology in the developers’ hands. But the spring of 2010 is very aggressive. Sony has made other promises before. We’ll see if this one comes true. Not only do you have to get the technology right, you have to have third parties supporting it and great first-party software. We showed demos yesterday and we have a lot of work being done at Microsoft Game Studios that we haven’t shown yet."
And Nintendo? "I don’t expect them or Sony to respond," said Kim. "It’s about a controller-free gaming experience. Nintendo went with the Wii MotionPlus to increase the fidelity of what they do. It’s not going to be easy to compete with Project Natal."
Facebook Comments