Checking In On Project Natal

itwbennett writes "A couple of interesting articles followed Robbie Bach's announcement at CES that Project Natal, Microsoft's controller-free Xbox 360 control system, will be shipping in time for the 2010 holiday season, writes blogger Peter Smith. First, Popular Science has a nice look at how Project Natal works, focusing mostly on the software and how 'Microsoft engineers are teaching the Natal 'brain' what various parts of the human body look like so that Natal can tell your ascot from your elbow.' Microsoft is staying mum on the hardware, although Smith notes that we know it involves an infrared camera. 'If you don't care about how the tech works but just want to know if it'll be worth buying,' writes Smith, 'you might be interested in an interview with Robbie Bach in the Financial Post. In the interview Bach claims that 70%-80% of Xbox 360 developers are working on some kind of Natal-enabled gaming software, and he assures us that first-party studios are also hard at work.'"

Comments

reason why it took so long

[bigmaddog]

They had to develop techniques to counter certain types of misuse...

What kind of games will actually use it?

[Tridus]

With word coming out that they removed Natal's processor and it'll now use anywhere from 10% to 33% of the 360's own processing power, just how good will the games be? There's going to be a price in what developers can you do when you chop that much CPU time out of the system compared to a standard game.

I dunno, I like the idea, but it seems like something Microsoft should bundle with their next system and not tack on to the 360.

Re:Am I the only one

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Am I the only one who thinks all these motion controllers are a passing fad that we will one day
look back on and laugh about?

No. You'll be happy to know you're one of a million-strong army of internet nerds that 'predicts' that anything popular will not be in the unspecified future. Your breed is not rare, although noone is quite sure how they continue to thrive from generation to generation.

Re:Am I the only one

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

More like those fools that said two screens was a gimmick, touch screens aren't innovative, nobody would play a game like Doom with the mouse instead of a keyboard, a music player without wirelss is lame, nobody wants a phone with a camera built in, etc.

Oh, and if you want to try an interesting academic excercise, go watch what Hollywood thought Virtual Reality would be back in 1993 then look at the games we play today. When you shake your head and go 'so?' think about what 16-bit games were like and the fact that Wolfenstein had not been main-stream yet.

You guys don't know the future and you don't appear 'smarter' because you're making a bet on it.