Cliff Bleszinski: Natal is Chasing Wii-Fit Market

Natal won't be tagged onto Gears

Posted by Staff
Cliff showing how Natal will work with web shooters...
Cliff showing how Natal will work with web shooters...
Epic's Cliff Bleszinski has indicated that Natal won't just be slapped on to any new Gears of War projects, and claims the technology is focused on chasing Wii-Fit.

Asked by Major Nelson what he makes of Natal, Bleszinski said, "Microsoft is very smart to go after this kind of, Wii Fit-type market. I mean, my Mum this Christmas asked for a Wii and a Wii Fit", he went on. "She doesn't play games at all and I'm like 'Damn you Nintendo!' But that's cool, right? That she's playing games she wouldn't normally have played."

On the Gears front he said, "Dude, y'know, if there's any future Gears products [coughs elaborately], it's not the kind of thing you tag onto a game like that, right?" Whether he means Natal won't be in there at all, or that Gears 3 will have a very well integrated motion-sensing component... well, that's still up for grabs.

"What you have is the 360, which has captured a lot of the video viewing audience - movies, Netflix, - it's captured a lot of the online gaming, it's captured a lot of the hardcore games. And, you know, segue that in. Now you have your yoga programme, you have your dodgeball thing, you have the creepy kid Milo who wants to drown you in the pond. You can do all of it.

"I'm a fan of... the whole system works amazingly well. They brought it out a few weeks before E3 to give us a peek at it and the driving, man, you just stick your hands forward and steer and I don't feel any lag with it. It's incredibly crisp and accurate.

"Will it replace traditional gaming? No, but it's another amazing way that we can expand the gaming experience to a wider audience and enhance what's already there", he said.

If you were so inclined, you might translate that to, 'Natal's great for Mums and casual gamers to muck around with. We'll leave it with them.' That's if you were that way inclined, of course...

Bleszinski also had a bit to say about the single-player content coming with Dark Corners, the upcoming Gears 2 DLC. "(It's) a 90-minute section that was actually snipped out of Gears 2, where Marcus and Dom are actually going to the Locust homeworld, and they're basically suited up in Locust armour and have a choice, because they knocked out a couple of Therons, they can go in guns-blazing as they always do, Rambo-style, or they can go with a more stealth approach. So, it's a little bit of stealth in the Gears universe", he said.

He noted that, "It's kind of a test to see whether people dig (single player DLC)."

There's plenty more in the podcast.

Comments

Robert Jung 20 Jul 2009 20:51
1/2
Is this the same CliffyB who previously said the Wii is "basically a repackaging of the little ping pong games they were selling at the mall"? The same CliffyB who said "I'm not going to make 'Zack & Wiki,' I'm not going to make f---ing 'Cooking Mama'"?
peter 20 Jul 2009 21:44
2/2
hopefully natal will kill off the xbox division... the damage they did to the industry from a consumer's viewpoint is irreparable
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