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Squilliam on 21 June 2009
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bdbdbd said:
Squilliam said:

Well its currently an open book as far as determining what they might or might not do. As far as im aware Natal is essentially a relaunch with current generation hardware although it could just as easily be updated higher performance hardware as well. Who can say at this point? There are plenty of seemingly viable strategies all around.



I don't know if this was to my 2009 comment, which was to point out that the 4-year cycle would mean new console in 2009, not 2010, or to the earlier post, considering why they would release a new console 2010 instead of a bundle.
Natal, as seen, looks like nothing more than a Eyetoy-like peripheral. And due to lack of input device, if Natal ever comes out, it will look more like the Sony system.
If M$ puts Natal out as a peripheral/bundled peripheral, it's not going to get supported by third parties and even if it would, the default controller would still be the default control method. In order to get the new system supported, you'd need to force the devs to use the new method, which can be done by making the new method the default controller.

If M$ goes on to put out an "upgrade" to 360 and soon after puts out a new console, the ones who bought the upgrade are likely to get pissed, M$ creates unneccessary competition to its platforms, which cause the devs getting pissed by having an extra platform to develope for.

Peripheral support is a complicated thing. I really can't say at this point what they intend to do and how they intend to implement Natal and even more so whether we will see entirely new hardware or just a refresh of the current Xbox 360 come 2010.

However I do think they could support both an Xbox 360 and an Xbox 360+ console at the same time should they so choose. Every game disc has about 1GB of space locked away from developers which could be unlocked to allow developers to support both consoles. Since the architectures would likely be extremely similar the costs imposed on developers would not be of terrible concern as an updated Xbox 360 SKU could feed off higher end PC development on Direct X 11+ and possibly in a way provide an easier transition to a next generation by taking hardware leaps in stages rather than at once. Nintendo uses this method with their handhelds all the time, its quite a proven method really.



Tease.