The GIF that ate Project Natal
Tags: Natal, PR, waggle, Xbox 360
A short time ago, some new video surfaced on the web showing a family from a family-type magazine playing a pre-release Project Natal game called River Rush.
This video looks ridiculous. Ridiculous enough that it quickly was transformed into an animated GIF, which made the rounds on various videogame fora, like a parade of stupid, honking and gyrating for all the kids to see. Go ahead and click.
Yeah.
It sums up the main image problem for Natal right now in a particularly succinct way. Basically: I Am Supremely Silly and Seem Un-Fun.
I want to pay particular attention to the kid in the red shirt in the front. This is the most honest reaction I’ve ever seen. He starts moving as (presumably) instructed, is instantly confused, and then looks around at his family to see what he’s doing wrong. They are all flailing like idiots, but smiling while they do it, so he kind of smiles and goes along.
Now, to be fair, you already look stupid playing videogames. Any videogames, motion-based or no. But calling attention to the particularly spectacular level of stupid – again, unrelated to actual fun – engendered by motion control (“waggle”) amplifies this sensation. Natal is going to be hard to sell, because it really makes you look stupid. Now, this wasn’t a big problem for the Wii. But at least you were holding something that presumably needed to be swung around. This GIF, above, is almost disturbing, transforming this nice wholesome family into seizure-prone mimes. It may not be a gameplay issue, but it is absolutely an image / PR issue. Someone on NeoGAF mentioned that this is “the world’s hardest GIF to spin”. Those are real people, in the target audience, playing a real Natal game on a real (albeit pre-release) Natal 360 system. It’s not contrived, it’s not a marketing video. It’s honest. And that’s what it looks like.
This GIF might be the toughest uphill marketing challenge the Xbox people have had to face since the whole RRoD issue. They desperately need a hit game to connect to this thing. After examining it for months now, I am still stumped as to how they are going to make this work.
But then again, maybe I am so far outside the target audience that I can’t even comprehend it.
Microsoft’s Cirque du Soleil-headlined “open to the public but closed to the internet” Natal demo is this happening Sunday night. I will be peering into the twitterstream that evening to see what impressions are like.
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Update June 11 – here’s another one. Yeesh.
4 responses to “The GIF that ate Project Natal”
“Natal is going to be hard to sell…”
That’s my perception at the moment, too. But I find Natal, Move, and the Wii all fairly unappealing. When it comes to gaming, above a modest comfort threshold I’m a lot more interested in the content than the interface.
“…because it really makes you look stupid.”
This, I don’t get. I see no correlation between users looking stupid and poor sales when I look at the history of gaming devices. I can only think of one product — the N-Gage — that appears to have been affected by how stupid it made you look. Of course, it wasn’t gaming on the N-Gage that was the problem, it was making phone calls.
I still think the main issue with Natal is tactile feedback. Though this applies to the Wii, at least you’re holding something so the body can at least, direct focus toward the object of control. Whereas, the above gif (and video) shows almost Wii Sports Boxing like levels of gameplay; utterly retarded goofy jazz hand movements. But then I thought the same thing about the Wii and people still buy it.
In a weird way ryushidude’s comment sort of answer’s Ajar’s comment…
In the case of the Wii I think the perception is, “you must wave this remote around to play it”, which people can understand. Sure you can look stupid while you do it if you really get into it, but you can also sit on the couch and just twitch your wrists while sitting down. The hoopla is optional.
The hoopla is not optional for Natal. You pretty much have to get up and spaz out. So I just wonder how easy it is going to be to sell that. Even just from a perspective of showing the game vs. showing the motions the game requires, in trailers and the like.
If you listened to the latest Giant Bombcast, think about the reaction they had to “air drumming” vs real Rock Band/Guitar Hero drums. It’s pretty negative.
I actually don’t like being down on Natal, I love new interface gadgets. But it’s such a huge launch, and it’s so fricking murky, what they are doing. Hopefully this is all just calm before the E3 storm.
There is a reason why the top two executives for MS’s Entertainment Division (one that makes and sells XBox) is slowly coming in to focus.
If the top two executives are gone on the eve of a huge product launch like this, it is *never* a good sign. Whether they left on their own or were pushed out, this is bad. And regardless of what the hardcore gamers among us feel about motion controls, Natal is very important to the future of XBox. This will determine whether Microsoft will finish second or last (again) this generation. First place is already gone to Nintendo. Battle is for second place (or first loser, if you will). Despite a year’s head start, and billions spent (not to mention the RRoD debacle), if Microsoft finishes last again (worldwide), we may just see Microsoft close up shop when it comes to home consoles (or at least shareholders demand as much).
The growth is in mobile gaming, and Microsoft completely missed the boat on mobile devices. At least Sony and Nintendo have a horse in that race. Windows Phone 7 is still at least six months off (assuming no more delays), and proper apps are a further at least six months beyond the release. Meanwhile the competition is a moving target – Apple has perfected the art of yearly updates, Nintendo is set to release the next handheld, Sony may limp along with the PSP and SonyEricsson phones – but at least they have something.
Despite Microsoft’s monopoly riches, I wonder how much more patience shareholders have to allow Microsoft to continue on its present strategy.
Make no mistake, Natal is extremely critical to the XBox division. And its top two execs leaving on the eve if its launch is not a good sign in any way shape or form. Even if (big if) one could argue that they are leaving Microsoft to go work for the competition six months from now, the future employer will not want to hire someone who leaves the previous company hanging. Even for highly paid execs, it looks better if their resume shows a successful launch followed by a departure, not a jump ship prior to a market failure.