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Travellers' Tales' Burton: Lag, Lack Of Buttons To 'Restrict' Natal
[12.18.09]
 Although he hasn't yet seen a final version of the tech, Traveller's Tales (Lego Batman, Lego Star Wars) director Jon Burton is speaking out on his reservations about Microsoft's Project Natal.
The controllerless input device seems to have some lag issues, Burton says -- an observation confirmed by Gamasutra sources, who say the lag is small but noticeable. Burton also sees less flexibility in design goals that can be accomplished with Natal.
“I was actually more impressed with Sony’s motion capture solution than Microsoft’s Natal,” Burton told UK trade site Develop.
"[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.
When both Sony's solution and Project Natal were unveiled at E3, Sony stressed the value in having a tangible object with input buttons, versus a completely body-controlled solution like Natal, and Burton seems to agree.
"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," he says.
But despite his uncertainty that Natal in its current state can become an ideal input for all genres, Burton did praise its software.
"The software behind Natal stunned me," he said. "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."
By Leigh Alexander
December 18, 2009 10:47:00 AM PST
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