Tetris Creator Skeptical of Project Natal [E3 2009]

post from Kotaku on 04 June 2009 07:00:00 PM. © Kotaku

Alexey Pajitnov, the father of puzzle video games, like the idea of full motion controls, but thinks any such system faces major hurdles.

"I am a little bit skeptical about (Project Natal)," he said. "I know how interfaces work and the reliability of this stuff is the key problem. You have to have 99.9 percent accuracy, if it's 98.9 it's no good."

The traditional button interface, he said, works 99.9 percent of the time.

"If they don't have this reliability with these new controls I don't think they can make it. It's a really, really serious challenge."

Henk Rogers, president of Blue Planet Software, which manages the rights to Tetris, said that the company has been working on motion controls of their own for future Tetris games.

They plan to unveil a motion-based Tetris game at this year' annual Burning Man celebration. The controls will have one or two people standing on a platform using their motions to interact with the Tetris pieces shown falling down a giant screen.

While Pajitnov thinks that perfecting motion control will be tricky, he thinks it has to be done.

"It a very right step in a very right direction," he said.