Anyone actually think the Natal is gonna be a success?

[DirtyP2002]

RolStoppable said:

DirtyP2002 said:

RolStoppable said:

Sounds a lot like the potential of the Wii. Three years later it doesn't really look like third parties have embraced the concept despite more than 50m consoles being sold, so the question is why would they fully back a 360 peripheral that starts completely from scratch? Does Microsoft have such great third party relations that they will get plenty of good games from the get go, even though it looks like Microsoft themselves don't think that they are in charge for driving the installed base with their own games (meaning that this burden falls back mainly on third party software)?

Why and how would Natal change the minds of third parties who absolutely want all systems to be similar so that they can easily port their games everywhere? What is it that puts Natal above the Wii regarding that?

The thread-title is "Anyone actually think the Natal is gonna be a success?". The Wii is a huge success. So something even close to the Wii, would be a success. I do not expect something strange like outselling the Wii, but I could think of some fresh air to the Xbox360 in its late fifth or early sixth year.

And this first party vs 3rd party stuff is soooo pointless. Customers do not care about it anyway. All they see is that there is a certain gaming experience that is only on the Xbox360. They don't care about it being 1st, 2nd or 3rd party.

One of their biggest franchises (Fable) will support Natal. Fable II is the best selling WRPG this gen, so this might be another boost for Natal.

For me the great advantage Natal has compared to the Wii is that you still have the regular controller. So you can play your game with the controller, but for some minigames / puzzles or whatever you can use natal with motion controls. The Wii is pretty much motion control only (most of the games, I know GCN controllers work etc). So that might encourage developers to support Xbox360 and Natal.

The Wii became a success, because it was completely supported by Nintendo. The problem I see for Natal is that Microsoft isn't fully behind it and rather expect third parties to do the job and drive the installed base of Natal. The question is why should third parties do this, betting on an unproven horse?

Yes, first party vs. third party is irrelevant for the customer, but if neither deliver a killer application, how is Natal supposed to sell? Fable 3 could sell Natal to existing 360 owners, provided it's for more than some minigame stuff. But it's not going to do anything to grab the attention of the expanded audience.

What you see as an advantage is actually a disadvantage. Natal is limited, while the Wii controller works for almost any kind of game. This basically means that Natal will probably be degraded to gimmicky uses in games and that won't be enough to convince people that they should buy Natal.

damnedl0ser said:

Probably because most 3rd party companies actually profit from the 360.  From my understanding a lot of the third party stuff on the wii loses money because of it being shovel ware.  I guess we will all know with some time.

If third parties would lose money (or don't make enough profit) on the Wii, surely they would stop supporting it. That's what happened to the Gamecube last generation. Or do you think that third parties are purposefully losing money on bad Wii games in a desperate attempt to hurt the Wii's image and make the HD consoles sell more?

This is just wrong. You can create full Natal games and you can include it in "normal" games you play with your controller. And you can create lots of new games, just with your voice. Something like Scribblenauts, just with saying instead of writing. 

And I do not know how you can say MS is not fully supporting Natal. Lionhead and Rare are both focussed on it. Expect every rare and every Lionhead game to have some kind of Natal integration.

They are building uo new teams to support Natal. Check the jobs they are offering:

http://www.microsoft-entertainment-jobs.com/find.job?job=main.search&q=Natal&startrow=1