14 DAY TRIAL // The former development leader on the Assassin’s Creed series believes that controller-free experience is the way of the future, but hardware companies need to better refine the technology before it becomes accessible to everyone.
Jade Raymond, who is currently leading the studio that Ubisoft has established in Toronto, has told the Official Xbox Magazine in the United Kingdom that, “As more of a hardcore gamer I want to see that stuff integrated into hardcore games in a way that makes them better because as fun as all those games are, I don’t really play exercise games – I can’t picture myself doing that. I’d love to be able to lean and look round the corner and just integrate more natural motions. The tech for those things isn’t quite there, but I hope it will soon.”
For the coming generation of hardware, Raymond hopes to see more accessible experiences, mentioning the holodeck shown in the Star Trek television series as one of the technologies that influenced her when she was younger.
The developer added, “You have to master face buttons, triggers and they all do different things, so obviously we’re never going to get to that really mass-market place where we’re touching a really broad audience with our messages with controllers, so Kinect and other more natural ways to interact with games are incredibly important. I think we can go further.”
Rumors suggest that Microsoft is already working on a 2.0 version of the Kinect motion tracking technology, which will be more accurate and will be part of its own next generation of home console.
Sony is also widely thought to be working on a motion tracking solution for the much rumored PlayStation 4.
At the moment, the Ubisoft Toronto team is working on Splinter Cell: Blacklist, which is set to arrive during 2013, and on another project that has not been officially revealed.