Thank god for this. I’m not one of those crazy, tea-bagging, MyBrPwNzU type Halo players, but there is a soft spot in my heart for the franchise. My friends and I played a lot in college, and I’m always interested to see what they do next in the series. It was music to my ears when Microsoft said we wouldn’t see a Halo: Natal until “it makes sense.”

Alex Cutting, a Halo 3:ODST Producer, told VideoGamer in pretty clear language the plans for Natal and the Halo franchise.

A lot of people are interested in what Natal’s presence in Halo’s going to be. We are committing to only doing it when it makes sense. We are not going to produce a gimmicky feature that just takes advantage of motion controls when it doesn’t feel right.

Glad to hear someone has that kind of focus. Natal seems cool, but even the driving games looked horribly gimmicky. Cutting does think the tech has its place in almost any genre, just that it needs to be appropriately implemented.

I think Natal can be integrated into most genres in some way. I think FPS, there’s a lot to be said for dual stick control. But, you know, before dual sticks came around and before Halo: Combat Evolved established it on a console, people were pretty doubtful about that, that it could ever move from keyboard and mouse.

Pretty sure I agree with that, though I’m not sure Halo was the game to actually pioneer the dual analog stick control. The idea, at the very least, existed in games like Goldeneye, with those yellow buttons on the N64 controller. Using a stick isn’t exactly the kind of leap that controller to Natal will be. Despite the gratuitous horn-tooting, I like that Cutting makes Microsoft’s position pretty clear, and that’s there might be some thought behind the whole thing.