At first impression, Project Natal wowed me just like everyone else and I began to see visions of the future finally coming true. We are going to be able to use freaking hand gestures to maneuver through menus and control things in game. Augmented and virtual reality is infinitely closer and more attainable to the common consumer. However, I quickly realized this might not be the whole picture. Perhaps it is just the cynicism in a number of the industry speakers we have had in class talking, but I soon saw Natal as a beautiful and horrible form of DRM protection.
Tying content to accounts is simply the easiest way now to limit use of content by those who have not paid for it. However, this is still somewhat easy to get around. Our apartment has only one Xbox 360 and my account is the only one with Xbox Live Gold. Therefore, I make all of the purchases, namely for new Rock Band songs. If other people want to play, my account has to be signed in to ensure that the songs are playable. As far as Microsoft is concerned, this is simply a failsafe to ensure that the content is only able to be enjoyed by me as the one who paid.
On the other hand, if Project Natal has the advanced face tracking that Microsoft claims it does, and the automatic account sign in based only on facial recognition, then it is now increasingly difficult for my friends to “impersonate me” and play the content that we have all collectively purchased without my sitting within view of the all seeing Project Natal. Alternatively, this could lead to a future where we all wear masks of each other’s faces to “trick” the system, almost a form of identity theft.
So does Project Natal really benefit the consumer or the developer more?
No comments:
Post a Comment