Update: Project Milo to Be Released, Not This Year.

Remember this article? Well forget about it.

Looks like the Virtual Boy lives again (not the Nintendo Console) with an announced mate, Kate! Lionhead, the producer of the tech demo for the Kinect, has decided to make him into his own game after all. Looks like Milo will not die alone after all in a cold storage center.

“Project Milo absolutely continues in development at Lionhead Studios,”
said Microsoft Project Manager Aaron Greenberg.

“It is just not a product we plan to bring to market this holiday. The team at Lionhead has always been a center of innovation and will continue to deliver against that charter.”

Looks like we can look forward to Milo and Kate coming out sometime in the future.

Project Milo a ‘No Go’ (UPDATE)

Lionhead Studio’s press demo from 2009 for the Kinect, Project Milo, is “Not A Game We’re Planning To Bring To The Market” says Lionhead Studios.

Project Milo was one of the most innovative ideas for the Kinect, allowing you to interact with an AI in a real-time environment.

A lot of the ideas put into Project Milo have appeared in the upcoming game for the Kinect, Kinectimals AKA Skittles Happy Fun Time Adventure; Read more

Microsoft: Natal the most spectacular of our collection!

Steve Ballmer, Director and CEO of Microsoft describes Project Natal as the most spectacular product that they are going to sell this year.

According to Ballmer, Natal is unique: our players won’t need controller or another big accesoy. its new technology, they will only need to make gestures and their voice will also be recognized, also according to Ballmer he thinks that natal can be used for other things to!

Demonstration

This fall project natal will be for sale and microsoft is planning to give a demonstration on the E3 this year. On June 13 the World Premier Project Natal for Xbox 360 Experience event will be held, and on June 14 Microsoft will let us know of their other plans during a Press conference

Goichi Suda speaks: motion control games offer new possibilities

Suda51, developer of Killer7 and No More Heroes does think that motion control in games has a sunny side to it; he also expects that the developers of project natal offer alot of possibilities.

Suda51 says that motion-control can make games even more popular to a larger group of people; according to Goichi Suda, this potential can surely be realised in the future.

Suda says that every developer is seeking for new things; a new way of control definitely provides unique possibilities to make something that is completely new. He also says that Suda himself is definitely interested in developing games for the new Natal technology.

Rumors of Project Natal interaction in Halo:Reach denied

Bungie has shot down the idea of Project Natal involvement with their upcoming release, Halo:Reach. A faulty screen shot has caused much of the controversy when the cross hair of the player was aimed to the far left of the screen.

The idea was shut down when one of the employee’s of Bungie denied these claims:
“Halo: Reach is NOT a Natal title and is being developed expressly with the traditional Xbox 360 controller in mind.”

I suppose that we can cross off Halo:Reach as a Natal game.

Santa baby, give me Project Natal next Christmas

Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach has confirmed it: Project Natal will be out this “holiday season”.

Nothing more specific than that was offered, but we take “holiday season” to be “November”. Probably its price, included games and final name (since, “Project Natal” is just a working title)  will most likely be announced at the E3 or Gamescom.

Fable III Will Use Project Natal and the In-game ‘shop’ will bring micro-transactions.

According to reports from Peter Molyneux’s BAFTA Video Games Lecture in London Fable III will make use of Microsoft’s Project Natal controller. nicholaslovell is twittering all over about Peter Molyneux’s Video Games Lecture. Apparently, Molyneux also joked that Natal would be featured in the form of a “feces simulator” for the game. Also he apparently said “Do you really think … knowing me … I wouldn’t want to use something like Natal?” Molyneux said at the PICNIC Conference in the Netherlands earlier this month. “I mean that’s just mad, man.”

Peter Molyneux isn’t just pushing the curve on Xbox 360 with now-confirmed Project Natal support in Fable 3; during his speech at the annual BAFTA gathering, the legendary designer revealed his intent to integrate an “in-game shop” within the game world, enabling players to purchase premium items without disrupting the game experience. In its report on the presentation, That VideoGame Blog noted that Molyneux had suggested special weapons, for example, could be sold for about £1 ($1.70).

Also mentioned were plans to offer “travel” to new areas of the game world (think Fable 2′s DLC destinations) for a fee. Molyneux thankfully didn’t suggest that such things as tattoos, hair dye and the like — which were purchased using the in-game currency of Fable 2 — would be for-pay in its sequel. We imagine that getting the town crier to announce you as “Supreme Ruler of the Universe Who’s Better Than Anyone Else at Fable 3 Ever” will carry a modest fee.

Source: Joystiq and Kotaku

Develop Reports: Unreal ‘the unofficial engine of Natal’

Rein: “If you want a big head-start with Natal development, come talk to me”

Epic Games VP Mark Rein has declared that Unreal 3 is the “unofficial engine” for Natal development.
Rein confirmed that Microsoft’s first batch of Natal demos – shown back at E3 in June – were powered by Unreal Engine tech, but were not developed by Epic Games.

“So obviously Microsoft has a new studio that is making games for Natal, and it’s using Unreal Engine 3,” said Rein, speaking to OXM. “The great part of all this is that it has extended the engine to do the mapping of Avatars, the animation system – all the good stuff that’s there.” Rein added: “So the nice thing is, we are going to work with Microsoft to make that available to Unreal Engine licensees who want to make Natal games. Read more

Kotaku: 33 Months Of Motion Control, The Wii’s Hidden Struggle

The famous games blog Kotaku hits a sour spot where i happen to agree with so please do read it!

By Stephen Totilo

The Wii Revolution has succeeded. Everyone knows this. What was once doubted and mocked now dominates and broadly entertains. But a major Wii struggle, made relevant again by the pending release of Wii Sports Resort, has hidden in plain sight.

This stumble in Nintendo’s stride has gained little attention as its competitors chase its dust. It’s about the key tool for movement in this big gaming movement.

The original promise of the Wii’s controller, the Wii Remote, was that it would augur a revolution in game control, a Motion Control Revolution.

Yet nearly three years later, with the Wii Sports‘ sequel, Wii Sports Resort,on the verge of its U.S. release, the triumph of the Motion Control Revolution is debatable at best. At the very moment when the wisdom of releasing the Wii is beyond dispute, it can be argued that the Motion Control Revolution has stalled — failed even — and that Wii Sports Resort is the next best hope (the last one?) to save it.

First shown at a game conference in Tokyo in September of 2005, the Wii Remote was going to make imitation swordsmen and dentists of us all. It was going to turn us into sharpshooters and champion fishermen, or so Nintendo’s video sizzle reel hyped.

When Wii Sports was released in November 2006, that Motion Control Revolution seemed assured. We swung the Remote like a tennis racket and heaved it like a bowling ball. Those motions first delighted our families at holiday gatherings and then an audience at The Oscars. Day after day, the anchors of cable news seemed charmed to play a game on a console whose name they struggled to pronounce.

Yet, since the Wii Remote birthed the great Wii Sports, it’s no stretch to claim that the revolutionary Remote has spawned no other great motion control games.

That’s Nintendo’s hidden stumble, this struggle for the motion-sensitivity of the Wii Remote to prove itself the equal of traditional button and stick controls, to say nothing of establishing itself as the superior option. Gamers groan at the flimsy motion controls mapped to action games. A shake of a hand replaces what could have been the press of a button. In game after game, motion control presents a different option, but one that seldom seems better.

As right as Nintendo was about so many things, maybe it was wrong about this. Or, as is so often the case with Nintendo’s Wii project, the failure here may be one of critical imagination. That happens. Forty years ago on Monday, a human being first stepped on the moon, and what people assumed would happen in the next four decades — trips to Mars, cities in space — have not been built. The guessers often guess wrong.

The future we may have expected in 2006 — of a 2007 and beyond filled with motion-based greats manipulated with a Wii Remote — has not come to pass. The lightsaber, magic wand and music-conducting Wii games we expected were made. But they felt constrained and inaccurate. Mario and Zelda have not been transformed into adventures of motion-based brilliance. Magnificent as that motion control in Wii Sports was, the ability to let a player control their game by swinging the Wii Remote appears to have inspired little confidence and limited mastery even in some of the world’s most expert game creators.

Even in Wii Fit, the great successor to Wii Sports, the Wii Remote was all but relegated to a laser pointer used to select menu options. Meanwhile, the mechanism for the game’s motion was the Balance Board, a controller inspired by a bathroom scale.

Other Wii designers minimized their use of the Wii Remote’s motion control even more. Chart-topper Super Smash Brothers played without it. Blockbusters Mario Kart Wii and Guitar Hero tucked it away in shells shaped like wheels and guitars, doing little to convince anyone that motion control was a must.

A new Zelda down-played it. A new Mario limited its motion-control element, as have so many Wii games, to the occasional vibration of a player’s right hand. This fall’s New Super Mario Bros. Wii, made in the two years since the last Wii Mario, uses motion control no more than the last.

Some games have used the Remote’s motion control aggressively. MadWorld, No More Heroes and Manhunt 2 harnessed its potential for violence. Wii Music marshaled motion for musicality. Boom Blox made it the mechanism for hurling baseballs at stubborn bricks. But fun as some of those games were, they were not hits.

In that dust behind Nintendo’s Wii, Microsoft and Sony are in the chase. Last month they revealed their own Motion Controllers, tied to cameras and, in the Xbox’s case with Project Natal, absent the need for players to hold anything in their hands. One wonders if the companies have noticed Nintendo’s struggles with motion control amidst the Wii’s triumphs. The use of arm and body movements to play games has not proven a game-changer in and of itself. By making games more appealing a wider audience, its been a component of a bigger change. But it’s also been a red herring.

Designers borrowing ideas from Wii Sports had had better success drawing from the game’s accessibility than strictly from its motion controls. The simplicity of its design made Wii Sports approachable, streamlined and friendly, the least intimidating game many people had played since Pac-Man. It has one of the shortest gaps between being turned on and being fun. These have been its smarter qualities — and have revealed that the genius of the Wii Remote may not be its swing but its shape. It can be understood when seen from across a room and clearly it’s no threat.

If the lack of games doing great things with motion control was one sign of trouble for the Motion Control Revolution, another was last summer’s revelation that Nintendo was building a gadget that would enhance/repair/improve the Remote’s motion-sensitivity. Bundled with copies of next Sunday’s Wii Sports Resort and made to be plugged into the base of a Wii Remote, the MotionPlus add-on is, in Resort, a necessary attachment for better sword-swinging, archery, bowling, golf and more. A swing is a swing and a flick is a flick, and the controller feels like it finally knows — instead of merely simplifies — how the player is moving.

After years of playing games made during Nintendo’s era of the Remote, playing Wii Sports Resort with MotionPlus attached suggests that we’ve been using a tool that was too blunt for the task. It is a technological success but also an admission by its manufacturers that the original Wii Remote was not capable of the motions we imagined — or that were teased in that sizzle reel.

Wii Sports Resort has greatness in it. A couple of days playing it — of going back for more and more — reveals it to be another joyful construction, a game with plenty of fun to share. The necessary bolting on of MotionPlus could be proof that, like Wii Fit or Guitar Hero, the greatest, most accessible motion-based games needs a unique device of its own, a controller shaped to the actions and fantasies of the game it supports. Wii Sports Resort suggests that for all the virtues of the Wii Remote’s simplicity, it was too simple on its own to enable a line of games made great by its motion control.

By exposing what’s been wrong with it, Wii Sports Resort may be the game to save the Motion Control Revolution.

(All images via Nintendo of America’s press site. Super Smash Bros. player image from Nintendo/Stuart Ramson)

“Project Natal for Windows”, says Bill Gates

At E3 this year, Microsoft officially announced their new expansion to the Xbox 360, Project Natal. A add-on that will add a controller free game experience to gamers all around.

While people see this as a great gaming tool. One CEO Bill Gates, sees it as a great opportunity for the Operating System Windows.

With all the things Microsoft has developed, we could see many great innovative ideas with Project Natal.