Ubisoft evaluating online multiplayer for Fighter Within on Xbox One
Ubisoft's Kinect-em-up, Fighter Within, lets players duke it out in local multiplayer, but the ability to battle online is ... hit-or-miss. Ubisoft is evaluating online multiplayer options for Fighter Within, Associate Producer Nicolas Joye told me during Gamescom.
"Since the beginning, [we've noted] online can potentially be an issue," Joye said. "We'll see what we do with it. Xbox One also is something that [Microsoft] is working on, their whole Live system behind it. We're not aware of everything Microsoft is doing on their side, so we can't detail anything right now but we'll see later."
After I briefly tried the offline multiplayer at a Gamescom demonstration, International Product Manager Aymeric Evennou said Ubisoft will detail the game's other modes in the months before it hits shelves on Xbox One launch day.
The website for the Xbox One game states friends can "compete online against the world to become the ultimate fighter," but Joye's comments suggest nothing is clear cut.
As for the offline multiplayer, I had a quick bout of motion-controlled fisticuffs with a guy twice my size – luckily Fighter Within lets me become a huge slab of tattooed warrior if I want to. There will certainly be cynicism around the game, which looks to be the successor to the critically massacred Fighters Uncaged for Xbox 360, but Within does look to step things up on the Xbox One's revamped Kinect sensor.
I'm always wary of assessing motion controls in the brief hubbub of a press event, especially when it comes to lag, but in terms of precision the game picked up my intended actions without any fuss; it was easy enough to pull off the various combos, blocks, dodges and special moves.
"Microsoft has worked a lot on the software behind Kinect," Joye said. "They've improved it tremendously. And then you have the technology, the hardware. The angle's much larger so you can get much closer to the camera, much further. You can play in any kind of apartment.
"It detects two people much better than the Kinect 1 used to do. With Kinect 1 we had issues where it would swap guys, play you as the other guy, stuff like that."
