Sony Brushes Off Natal During Move Demonstration
Could have worked with similar tech, but found it added nothing new.
Sony's Dr. Richard Marks appeared on the Engadget Show to demonstrate the upcoming PlayStation Move peripheral, revealing why he chose not to pursue a similar approach to Microsoft's Natal camera at the same time.
"We tried a lot of different 3D cameras. We worked closely with our game teams at what it would enable, and while it made the things we already did with EyeToy more robust, it didn’t really enable as many new experiences as we were hoping for," Marks explained. "So it made the things we were already able to do a little bit more robust - which is good - but it adds a lot of cost, and it didn't enable some of what we wanted to achieve."
Ouch. SCEA CEO Jack Tretton has already opined that Natal - a product of Israeli company 3DV Systems - amounts to a glorified Eye Toy, but Microsoft has been keen to enhance the technology and reduce cost. One significant change saw the removal of the peripheral's co-processor, instead relying on the Xbox 360 processing power.
Marks also explained why Sony went for the glowing spheres; "Sometimes a tech demo doesn’t translate into a product very well. For example, [in the tech demo] we were tracking those colored balls, but since there’s no light in the ball or anything like that, the lighting in the room has to be good enough for the camera to see the color reliably."
"That makes for a difficult product when you don’t have a control over those variables," Marks continued. "And with a 3D camera it’s a little bit similar in that we found that there were some things we wanted to be able to do and sometimes it wouldn’t work reliably for what we wanted to do."
Watch the episode here, it has some pretty cool new tech demos.
"We tried a lot of different 3D cameras. We worked closely with our game teams at what it would enable, and while it made the things we already did with EyeToy more robust, it didn’t really enable as many new experiences as we were hoping for," Marks explained. "So it made the things we were already able to do a little bit more robust - which is good - but it adds a lot of cost, and it didn't enable some of what we wanted to achieve."
Ouch. SCEA CEO Jack Tretton has already opined that Natal - a product of Israeli company 3DV Systems - amounts to a glorified Eye Toy, but Microsoft has been keen to enhance the technology and reduce cost. One significant change saw the removal of the peripheral's co-processor, instead relying on the Xbox 360 processing power.
Marks also explained why Sony went for the glowing spheres; "Sometimes a tech demo doesn’t translate into a product very well. For example, [in the tech demo] we were tracking those colored balls, but since there’s no light in the ball or anything like that, the lighting in the room has to be good enough for the camera to see the color reliably."
"That makes for a difficult product when you don’t have a control over those variables," Marks continued. "And with a 3D camera it’s a little bit similar in that we found that there were some things we wanted to be able to do and sometimes it wouldn’t work reliably for what we wanted to do."
Watch the episode here, it has some pretty cool new tech demos.
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