If High Voltage is trying too hard, Microsoft is trying even harder. After seeing the far-reaching plans on display during yesterday's presentation, it's become clear to me that Nintendo will go another year without competition from the Xbox 360. (Sony will continue to be irrelevant to Nintendo no matter what happens at their conference.)
The Mario Kart clone looked like a desperate attempt to reach out to the casual market, and of course it must be free to have any hope of catching on. This ploy has been in Microsoft's playbook for a long time, perhaps the most famous example being Internet Explorer in Netscape's heyday.
But things turned downright ridiculous when Project Natal was trotted out in front of an incredulous audience. The technology's obviously early, but that doesn't excuse the ambitious video mockups we saw. Here's a recap in case you missed it:
This trailer was fully intended to wow the press and get the critical buzz going (PC World certainly took the bait), but the fine print says it all: "Product vision: actual features and functionality may vary." In other words, we saw nothing more than smoke and mirrors; a number of the features "shown" are likely not even in development at all.
Stephen Totilo at Kotaku gave us another demonstration of how Natal has generated unrealistic expectations. Totilo's describes his experience with Peter Molyneux's "Milo" in a positive light, but two statements simply can't escape unnoticed:
[Molyneux] repeatedly cautioned that some of what I would experience with the game were "tricks."
The Milo demo was partially being manipulated by a developer who was sitting nearby, and I couldn't tell if he was merely calibrating the game or how much he was pulling its strings.
All in all, Microsoft certainly managed to put on a show. But I'll be surprised if Natal sees the light of day even a year from now. Even if it does, it will end up going the way of Sony's EyeToy: big on the promises, underwhelming on the delivery.
Nintendo's conference starts in less than an hour!
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