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TT director excited by Sony wands

Reckons Natal will suffer from "lag".

Traveller's Tales director Jon Burton has said he is more excited about the Sony motion controller than Microsoft's Project Natal, although he admits the latter's technology is "amazing".

"I was actually more impressed with Sony's motion capture solution than Microsoft's Natal," Burton told Develop.

"[Natal is] exceedingly clever, but the lag on the input and lack of physical buttons is really going to restrict the kind of games that can be done with it."

Meanwhile, Burton expects the Sony controller to be "cheap" and "accurate", and of course it has buttons, which are all the rage.

But the LEGO Everything veteran also admitted that the Natal software was "nothing short of amazing" given its ability to "get anything resembling mo-cap, live in real time, from effectively a single camera".

The Natal sensor bar and camera combination is at the core of Microsoft's vision for controller-free gaming, which many expect it to launch for Xbox 360 in 2010.

Sony, meanwhile, has said to expect its as-yet unnamed motion controller next spring. The device uses the PlayStation Eye camera and handheld wands to track movement with unerring precision.

Check out Digital Foundry's extensive hands-on and analysis of Project Natal to see whether Burton's fears of lag are justified.

(Oh, and thanks to the reader who submitted this story with the promise that it would "activate the fanboys". Don't give him the satisfaction, gentle reader!)