E3: Spielberg: Natal a "whole new world"

Steven Spielberg reckons that Microsoft's Project Natal technology represents "a whole new world; a whole new beginning" for videogames, and that all we've seen previously has been "thrown away".

"I'm currently making videogames through EA. And right now I'm so excited to be able to write for this platform, and that's what I'm most excited about, because it sort of changes the paradigm of what I would have written for last week, now all that has been thrown away and it's a whole new world, a whole new beginning," Spielberg, who unveiled the technology on-stage at the Microsoft E3 conference last night, told the BBC (spotted by vg247).

He went on to say that while there have been games of movies and vice versa, videogames have never allowed the emotional freedom of their big-screen counterparts, as we've been too busy faffing with or worrying about the controls.

"I don't really know of a convergence, and I can't give you a date for convergence, but so far the videogame industry has not allowed us the opportunity to cry while we're playing a videogame because we're too busy putting our adrenaline rush into the controller, or to wherever we have to swing our arm with the Wii controller to get a result, to achieve a level of success," said Spielberg.

"Because of that there's no room for a videogame to break your heart," he added. "I think, in terms of a technology, we have a little more room to be much more emotional with the Natal technology than we ever have before."

There's no word on what Spielberg will create for Natal, nor whether he'll do that through EA or new best friend Microsoft.

Head over to our recently-published hands-on impressions of Project Natal from E3 to find out much more.