Traveller’s Tales’ director Jon Burton fears that a controllerless UI will limit its flexibility for different genres and games

Microsoft has invested significant money and time to ensure its upcoming motion controller Natal is as accomplished as its host console, yet suspected “lag issues” may curb the peripheral’s chances of success.

That was the view offered by Traveller’s Tales company director Jon Burton, who told Develop that his own experience with the hands-free controller raised doubts.

“I was actually more impressed with Sony’s motion capture solution than Microsoft’s Natal,” he said as part of this week’s Develop Jury Service.

“[Natal is] exceedingly clever, but the lag on the input and lack of physical buttons is really going to restrict the kind of games that can be done with it,” he added, before going on to praise Sony’s (currently nameless) alternative.

“Sony’s solution will be cheap, accurate and will put buttons at your fingertips, meaning everything from action adventures to FPSes can be handled with the same input.”

Burton’s fear is that any controllerless device will struggle to achieve the level of immediacy and precision that’s found analogue sticks, buttons and mice. And, as such accuracy and fluidity is demanded by a vast number of games and genres, questions have been raised on which kind of games Natal will fit best with.
 
It has been suggested previously that the flexibility of Natal’s camera could allow for games where a controller and the Natal camera can be used together – a solution that could somewhat defeat the purpose of Natal itself.

However, Burton has not seen a final version of Natal, as Microsoft looks to tweak the device before its ‘November’ launch.

“The software behind Natal stunned me,” added Burton. “To be able to take effectively a bump-map of a person and turn that into a fully articulated and rigged polygonal skeleton is an incredible feat. We run a mo-cap studio and to get anything resembling mo-cap, live in real-time, from effectively a single camera is nothing short of amazing.”

Microsoft recently confirmed it will reveal more details about Natal to developers at its Gamefest conferences in February.

The revelation followed reports that the company is agressively ramping up recruitment for Natal-tied software, and is touring studios to encourage development deals.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/33524/Natal-lag-issues-will-hurt-game-development#after_ad

He seemed pretty fair and honest in what he was saying.So basicly its rather incredible for what it is but its not very practical due to some input lag?

natal seems to be a good idea but not for games that would appeal to a large audience.. i think it will flop, fail, underachieve.. natal is setting itself up for a booooooooo!!!! why do i think this you may ask? what do you prefer to play? gears of war, halo, mass effect.. or tennis lag, baseball lag, and human ping pong!

Don't care about Natal, but excited about the PS Arc

Natal will fail more than Virtual Boy

the only thing of pachter that i have ever agreed with was on bonus round one day he said microsoft used games as a trojan horse to introduce people to the internet in their living room on the tv. Another reason was to stop sony from completely taking over the pc market and turning into a monopoly with the ps2 which at that time was huge! i believe that natal is another step towards that goal. We can all tell natal is an awesome system when used as an interface for like movies and cool little things like the iphone. They are just introducing it on a system which has sold almost 40 million around the world to get it started fast and that is with games on the xbox 360.

Then I dont quite understand whats the purpose of posting here?To the guy above that post.I think it could be good for strategy games ,slower paced adventure games, heck maybe even turned based games with some fill in the symbol using you hand type of thing.It all depends on the software really.

Already been posted. Especially considering this is months old.

I knew this was going to be the case as soon as they said it would track at 30fps. Sony admited that was the Eye Toy's biggest weakness, and the number one goal of the new Playstation Eye camera was to track players quicker. That is why the PSEYE is capable of 60 and 120fps tracking, depening on the video capture settings.

Now I will admit, the Natal camera as far as features goes is a much more impressive camera, but as a gaming application the tracking speed just won't work wonders. Due to that issue, even if you add a controller to Natal, it will never be able to achive what the PSEYE + Wand will be capable of.

So much PS3 fanboyism it's nauseating....hooray for vgchartz!