Scot Bayless knows a thing or two about failing, he was Senior Producer at SEGA of America when they came up with the brilliant idea for the SEGA 32x. He also served at Microsoft as Studio Manager. Seeing all those studios closing at Microsoft Games Studios, don’t think he did a great job there either. This is what he had to say about Microsoft’s add-on.
“When I met with Microsoft in 2008 to look at Natal I asked: ‘When will you integrate this into the 360? Their response was: ‘We’re probably going to wait and see on that.’ To which I said: Then you’re going to fail.'”
He makes a great point about splitting the user base apart. Game development is expensive as it is, HD consoles finally reached the “above 35 million units sold” area and now developers will have to risk doing games for a smaller market that owns Project Natal or Playstation Move? Will casuals buy them? If Natal is $150 as rumored, they won’t. Again, we don’t know if Microsoft has “integrated” Natal with a new SKU, but if the bundled rumor price of $300 for an arcade is correct, a bit tough to lure in “the casuals. ”
Why would they buy expensive add-ons and consoles when the Wii is integrated with motion control since day one, costs $200 dollars and has a slew of motion based games already?
[Source: Now Gamer]
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Though maybe if Mr. Bayless thought the 32X would succeed and it failed, then thinking Natal will fail means it will succeed? Ha! I don't know, I still think Natal and Move will be successful if sold for under $100 and bundled with a game. I'm sure there won't be THAT huge a split between Natal and non-Natal games. Who knows, maybe even Natal games will have alternate controller controls.
There were a lot of people who said music games, mobile games, 3D games and motion controls would never take off, too.
Though I too doubt it will do well at all if it is above 100 USD at launch.
If the rumored prices are true, it will probably fail. There is no reason to buy a $150 peripheral, let alone one this is trying to hop on the motion control bandwagon.
£100 is too much, I needed convincing when I read how much spce it needs to recognise movements
Its success or failure doesn't necessarily hinge on public perception of how well or badly it's selling… it all depends on how much they invested in it, and how much the make back, or lose, on each one sold. Sounds like it's been quite expensive to them.
Tons of people have bought equally expensive (and slightly more expensive sets of) peripherals for music games. But there have been extremely compelling pieces of software to accompany them. The software for Natal at this point is almost completely a mystery.
As for myself, I would only be interested in it if it were used to supplement the regular controller (e.g., headtracking in a FPS), but from everything I've heard it's intended to entirely replace the controller. So it doesn't appeal to me much yet. I'm looking forward to hearing more at E3…. (or, in all likelihood, leaked just before E3.)