[Valigarmander]

Traveller's Tales Director Believes Natal Lag Will Hurt Development

As novel of a concept as it is, Natal's lack of a physical controller -- and, by extension, the accompanying input lag -- are real causes for concern, according to Traveller's Tales director Jon Burton. Speaking with Develop, he expressed his feeling that Sony's wand motion controller (Gem?) will be the superior motion controller, thanks in large part to the lower level of lag and physical buttons which make the controller more viable for a wide variety of genres.

"[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," Burton said. But he had nothing but praise for Sony's wand, saying, "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 conceded the fact that he hasn't seen the final version of Natal, so it's entirely possible the lag he's referring to will be eliminated by the time Microsoft releases it.

And although he questioned just how well Natal will work with a wide variety of games, he did admit the technology itself is incredible. "The software behind Natal stunned me," Burton explained. "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."

Still, he raises a point (even if it's one that has been made before) about just how viable Natal will be for playing certain types of games. Without physical buttons or a controller to offer some additional input, it seems like it'll be a real challenge to make Natal work with the games that Sony's wand could potentially work with. And if the lag is as serious an issue as Burton makes it out to be, developers might find themselves struggling to make quality games using Natal.

So much for replacing TV remotes.