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Existing Xbox 360 Games Unlikely To Get Natal Patch

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

September 28, 2009

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Microsoft Game Studios’ Kudo Tsunoda has said it’s unlikely it will be possible to “patch” current Xbox 360 titles to make them compatible with upcoming motion sensing technology Natal.

While Microsoft has demoed Natal in conjunction with the likes of Burnout Paradise, Space Invaders Extreme and Beautiful Katamari, Tsunoda told Destructoid that engineering existing titles to work with the new hardware requires the alteration of a large amount of game code.

So publishers wishing to enable current titles to work with Natal controls will likely have to release updated versions of their games, he said.

First revealed at E3 in July, the Natal sensor tracks body movement in 3D using an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and a custom processor running proprietary software.

“Among the elite publishers actively working on games for Project Natal" are Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, Capcom, Disney Interactive, Electronic Arts, Konami, MTV Games, Namco Bandai, Sega, Square Enix, THQ and Ubisoft, Microsoft said last week.

DubsTF's picture
On September 29th DubsTF said:

DANG. And here I was all set to go start camping out in line for this thing when I heard that I could play Space Invaders by waving my hands around in the air. I was hoping I could also play Asteroids by turning cartwheels.

Thanks for the update, sunglasses clown!

Duncan_Stewart's picture
On September 29th Duncan_Stewart said:

Does anyone else think massively expensive white elephant?!

Ben_Lathwell's picture
On September 29th Ben_Lathwell said:

I will wait and see, its still too early to say if this will be a success or not.

It certainly looks better than Sony's six-axis/ motion control wand.

Whether its enough to contend with the Wii is another matter. I think Microsoft will be hard pushed to beat the Wii in terms of sales.

I wonder if Microsoft, Sony or indeed Nintendo have actually looked into whether or not people are actually still using their Wii. The impression i get is that it swept through the non-gaming community like a fad wave, however people i speak to now just dont seem to be playing on it anymore.

Does anyone have any figures on this, e.g sales year on year, amount of games owned by console owner on average, average hours spent on Wii vs other consoles more specific than this article http://www.edge-online.com/news/study-73-per-cent-of-uk-citizens-regular...

Duncan_Stewart's picture
On September 29th Duncan_Stewart said:

I powered my Wii up for the first time in ages today, I still like the console, I just wish there were more decent games available for it, not just party games which will probably be the Natal / Sony Wand market as well. There will probably be a big marketing push and sales initially but when the 100th boring party game gets released everyone else will have gone back to regular controllers and decent games.

zerobob's picture
On September 30th zerobob said:

I just wish the Wii had slightly higher resolution graphics. Not much higher, but higher.

I think it's a fad too. No, correction, I've known it's a fad more or less from day one, as a) Nintendo never release enough good games and b) The Wiimote simply doesn't work well enough with most games to be considered a true controller alternative - the pointer is short range and indefinite apart from anything.

Most people I know who have one have either sold it, or never switch it on. What a great way to spend £180.

SaintJude's picture
On September 29th SaintJude said:

I can't make up my mind about Natal. Either a massive flop or a distinctly average success. I can't imagine it adding positively to any genre. Indeed the only way I can see this working is in conjunction with the controller - gestures replacing some of controller action - in which case Natat is almost completely a gimmick.

grognard66's picture
On September 29th grognard66 said:

No.

Most developers/publishers won't bother patching old games (most games taper off in sales after 3-4 months) for anything other than bugs. It's not that easy to redesign an existing game to a completely different control mechanism and MS is pushing developers to make games specifically suited to Natals capabilities - not forcing developers to put it in there just for marketing purposes (like Sony did with their motion control - i.e. Lair).