Microsoft’s E3 conference this year could be described nicely as ‘lackluster’, and it’s likely few can defend its worth or find true merit when holding it up to its competition. In fact, some of the developers working on Kinect seem to feel the same way.
Stephen C Webster over at Trueslant had a conversation with Child of Eden’s producer James Mielke about the game, and his response is as candid as a response can be.
“Yeah, Microsoft fucked up big time,” Mielke said with a grin. “They had a chance to feature it for Kinect but decided to focus on family-friendly games like what’s on Wii. They weren’t expecting everyone to react so negatively. After we showed off our game at UbiSoft, the Microsoft people came to our booth like, ‘Oh, oh wow.’”
Apparently Shigeru Miyamoto (of just about everything Nintendo fame) checked the game out during his usual yearly E3 walk-about and called it the ‘game of the show’.
Webster dug a bit further, expressing his disappointment with Kinect’s shown software lineup and how it reverberated through the rest of the press as well. He also told him that Child of Eden might be enough to warrant a purchase of the camera despite this. Mielke agreed.
“Lots of people were saying that — except, you don’t even need Kinect to play it.”
Of course, he’s referring to the fact that the game supports the standard Xbox 360 controller. It will also appear on the Playstation 3, but no Move support is planned at this time. The game appears to be pretty far along development, and according to Mielke’s estimates, the currently unknown price of the device will be announced long before the game hits retail.
“[Eden] will be out before next year’s E3, probably like Spring 2011. It sounds like a long time but, for me, looking at it from the inside, that’s not long at all.”
If you go to the original source or Mielke’s twitter, TrueSlant fessed up to fabricating the story. No such conversation ever happened with the producer.
TrueSlant never said the story was fabricated from what I can see, unless you have a confession I couldn’t find. It appears that Mielke wanted those comments to remain “off the record”, but failed to state that. Here’s what Webster said about the issue on the website:
(Update: The game’s producer has since backpedaled from his frank assessment of Microsoft’s Kinect debut, insisting the comments were made in an off-the-cuff manner not intended for publication. Though I was clearly wearing a “Media” badge at the time of our conversation, I regret this oversight but maintain the accuracy of his quotes. Original story follows.)
If you’re referencing the Miyamoto remark, here’s what TrueSlant had to say about that as well:
(Update: a producer on Child of Eden, whose post to Facebook was the source of this story, has since taken his page down and called the comment a “joke” that was not intended for publication. In my opinion, Child of Eden really is “game of the show” and has the power to sell many a Kinect for Microsoft. Did Miyamoto actually agree? The game’s producer said he did, but that fact remains decidedly unconfirmed.)
I did check out Mielke’s Twitter, and it appears he’s claiming exactly what you said. He wouldn’t be the first quoted figure in the history of interviews to be misquoted, but he also wouldn’t be the first to say something and regret it later. My gut is to believe the interview is real, in all honesty, but now it’s taken with a huge grain of salt.
Thankfully, this is why we source our news stories. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Reader.