Author Topic: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii  (Read 6467 times)

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Offline NWR_pap64

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Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« on: January 27, 2010, 12:21:40 AM »
A report reveals that Nintendo was offered the opportunity to use Natal technology for Wii.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=20838

 According to a report by European videogame news site CVG, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata was offered the opportunity to use the technology behind Microsoft's Project Natal on the Wii.  Iwata turned it down.    


The reason Iwata refused to accept the technology, despite being impressed by the demo created by 3DV Systems, was because he didn't believe they could release the peripheral at a mass-market price and couldn't see it as an add-on peripheral for Wii.    


"3DV showed off a camera that detected motion in 3D, and had voice recognition - but Iwata-San was unconvinced he could sell it at a Nintendo price point. He also had some worries around latency during gameplay", CVG's insider at Nintendo explained.    


Microsoft revealed Project Natal at E3 2009, showing off demos that showcased facial and vocal recognition as well as body movement in a 3D space. When Shigeru Miyamoto was asked about the technology, he said that "This type of motion-sensing camera technology has been around for quite a while. [We've] ultimately made the decision not to take advantage of what they can do", referring to the technology seen in Sony Computer Entertainment's EyeToy peripheral.

Pedro Hernandez
NWR Staff Writer

Offline Plugabugz

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #1 on: January 27, 2010, 09:05:47 AM »
I think it was rejected because Wii Remote + Natal in one box is far too complex.

Offline Caliban

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2010, 10:23:57 AM »
I think this is old news in the sense that I think something like this was mentioned in one of the "Iwata Asks" thingies.

Offline Chozo Ghost

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #3 on: January 27, 2010, 10:34:19 AM »
Iwata is a wise man. Yamauchi led Nintendo to ruin during the N64 and GC years, but Iwata has really turned things around. I'm not saying Yamauchi sucks or anything, because he was the one who made Nintendo a success in the first place. I just think that in his old age he lost touch with reality a bit and so it was time to hand the operation over to someone younger.

With Iwata, Nintendo has been in good hands.
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Offline Fatty The Hutt

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #4 on: January 27, 2010, 11:34:08 AM »
Smart move on Iwata's part, methinks. I don't see Natal taking the gaming world by storm anytime soon.
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Offline BlackNMild2k1

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #5 on: January 27, 2010, 11:59:39 AM »
I think this is old news in the sense that I think something like this was mentioned in one of the "Iwata Asks" thingies.
Whats new about this is that it tells us why Iwata turned it down.
The only thing that can be considered old (in internet time) is that we discussed it yesterday in the Natal thread.

But just as I said in the other thread, the same concerns that Iwata had then are still problems with the tech today. Developers are still showing concern with the lag and some of the videos show that it is still a problem. Also Price. MS removed the dedicated chip and decided to sacrifice system processing power to make this camera work instead since a dedicated chip was too expensive to bring to market.

Now this 360 Natal as "a new console" will be as much as what it was promised to be as the wiimote was before M+ showed up.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2010, 12:05:07 PM by BlackNMild2k1 »

Offline NinGurl69 *huggles

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #6 on: January 27, 2010, 12:09:18 PM »
The Natal 360 package is a stick of 360 butter with 1/3 sliced off (and 1/3 of the taste).

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Offline Stratos

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #7 on: January 27, 2010, 12:17:52 PM »
Iwata is a wise man. Yamauchi led Nintendo to ruin during the N64 and GC years, but Iwata has really turned things around. I'm not saying Yamauchi sucks or anything, because he was the one who made Nintendo a success in the first place. I just think that in his old age he lost touch with reality a bit and so it was time to hand the operation over to someone younger.

With Iwata, Nintendo has been in good hands.

Yamauchi is to Nintendo what Eisner was to Disney. He led them through some great times but at the end of his tenure with them started to go mad and was hindering the company's success with poor decisions.
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Offline TJ Spyke

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #8 on: January 27, 2010, 09:15:21 PM »
Exactly, it was Yamauchi who basically force Minoru Arakawa (his son-in-law, and former president of Nintendo of America) to launch the NES in America even after 2 straight trade shows where no retailers placed any orders for it and after a research panel with kids ended with them all saying they hated the NES games shown (one kid even saying they "looked like ****"). Arakawa thought that maybe the video game market in North America really was dead (people kept telling him this but he kept trying to change their opinion). Yamauchi's power also ended up hurting him though as he is a very stubborn man who was the man responsible for Nintendo being considered a "bully" by retailers and third party publishers. I don't think it was a coincidence that Square Soft didn't start making games for Nintendo systems until after Satoru Iwata took over.
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Offline King of Twitch

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #9 on: January 27, 2010, 10:46:00 PM »
What the Fils-Aime does this have to do with Yamauchi
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #10 on: January 27, 2010, 11:25:40 PM »
I don't think it was a coincidence that Square Soft didn't start making games for Nintendo systems until after Satoru Iwata took over.

Yamauchi famously calling RPG gamers (paraphrased) "losers who live in their parents' basement" during the N64 age will do that.  Considering (IIRC...we won't see Dragon Quest 10 for a while) Square-Enix still hasn't made a single RPG for a Nintendo console since the SNES days, I'd say that comment might still be hurting them.

As for the topic at hand, I don't blame Nintendo passing on this tech.  I'm still not convinced it actually works as sold, and Microsoft making this a 360 tech-draining software upgrade doesn't help matters.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2010, 11:28:26 PM by broodwars »
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Offline Chozo Ghost

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #11 on: January 28, 2010, 04:23:20 AM »
I don't think it was a coincidence that Square Soft didn't start making games for Nintendo systems until after Satoru Iwata took over.

You mean Square-Enix. Square Soft put out everything it made on the Super Nes, while putting nothing out on the Genesis and other systems of that era. I don't think they abandoned Nintendo because of "bullying" in the N64 period either. The reason most commonly cited is that they hated cartridges because of the limited space it offered. But before they moved to Sony, they did have a few N64 games in the pipeline which will sadly never see the light of day.
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Offline Stratos

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2010, 04:30:13 AM »
The infamous 'Final Fantasy 64' was debunked to not even be an N64 game or planned for the system, so what other games did they actually have in the works for N64?
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Offline Chozo Ghost

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2010, 05:31:29 AM »
Alright, well I guess they had nothing then. But I do recall they were a member of Nintendo's N64 "Dream Team" in the beginning.
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Offline TJ Spyke

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2010, 08:07:32 PM »
I don't think it was a coincidence that Square Soft didn't start making games for Nintendo systems until after Satoru Iwata took over.

You mean Square-Enix.

No, I mean Square Soft since they started making games for Nintendo systems again before they merged with Enix. Maybe not on GameCube, but they had released a few Game Boy Advance games before the merger.
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Offline AV

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #15 on: January 30, 2010, 03:18:37 PM »
if i was nintendo i would have bought up the tech, and sat on it.
Sit for years, and tweak it for WiiHD.

combine natal tech with sensor bar, so it's strait forward to use and easily adpoted

Offline pyrokamileon

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Re: Iwata Turned Down Natal Technology for Wii
« Reply #16 on: January 30, 2010, 04:16:04 PM »
my guess is they really don't have to buy up the technology because they've always got their R&D going.  they could have already developed something like this back in their labs and if they try and come out now and say we did this first people would only see them as sore losers.  If they have a technology that's not ready or not cheap enough they'll hold onto it.  And then again maybe they don't already have something like this cooking behind the scenes but who's to say they couldn't develop their own technology their own way and not have to pay licensing fees for it now or later...  I still remember before the Wii came out they were working on a way to have multiple people see different things through the same display using holograms or something.  I wonder how that's coming along...
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