Project Natal

I’ve given the concept to Microsoft’s newest camera thingamajig, Project Natal, some time to soak, process and digest.  I must say I am very cautiously optimistic. So this beefed up camera make it so you, the whole you, become the actual controller.  But should you care?

So let me get this straight, it enables you to drive Burnout Paradise with just your hands and feet and no controller, kind of like the U-Force for the NES. That’s neat though you’ll probably get tired holding you arms up after 10 minutes.

You can play fighting games with your body, kind of like the old Activator for the Sega Genesis.  I know my fat ass will get tired in 10 minutes doing that as well.

So I can play sports, etc like the Nintendo Wii. I got over basic motion controls with my Wii and I tend to find them mostly tacked on or annoying.

The only cool thing I dig about this is the facial recognition and maybe scanning in my own crap in game.  Okay and controlling Netflix ala  Minority Report is freaking sweet looking.

The Natal seems to be like every single gimmicky peripheral that was released in video gaming’s life time but now in high definition for your Xbox 360. Will this thing actually work or is this all cleaver marketing and a lot of smoke a mirrors?  Excuse me for being skeptical, but this almost sounds too good to be true. I’m just not buying into the hype. Correction, I haven’t completely fallen for the hype, well, that was until I actually sat down yesterday and watch the Milo demonstration.

(Head Explodes)

Holy hell, what has Peter Molyneux created? This is a fantastic demo assuming the woman wasn’t acting and everything wasn’t already scripted. The first thing that came to mind was a next generation Seaman that actually had some sort of intelligence. Of course, Skynet can become aware via Xbox Live and enslave the human race with Milo being it’s virtual savior. I’m hoping the three laws of robotics have been hardwires in place to keep Milo from hacking my bank account and buy shitty download content for his virtual world.

This one single demo made me excited about all of the potential the Natal as to offer gamers. From the motion detection to the person’s reflection in the water, imagine how cool games could be, just by adding a few elements of Natal’s gimmicks to enhance gameplaand with the addition of a second camera lens, the Natal can actually see in 3 dimensions. So when do you think we are going to see true home port of the arcade motion shooter Police911 or have elements of having to actually dodge to be safe in the next Gears of War? Or what about having a murder mystery game where you have to use elements of the real world to solve the puzzles in the game? I’m getting excited just thinking about the potential.

So here’s the million dollar question of the day: Will game developers actually support this device or ignore it like the crappy Xbox Live Vision Camera? Cool tech is worthless if no one makes good games for it. Also, how much for this tech? Supposedly the Natal has its own processor, two cameras and a light sensor. You know this won’t be cheap. So is anyone here interested in this tech? And will the Xbox 360 be able to overthrow humanity?

–Jangofatt