source: http://games.kikizo.com/features/microsoft-natal-xbox-360-why-its-a-big-deal-p1.asp

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By Adam Doree, June 11, 2009

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At a dinner party last year, British game designer Peter Molyneux told me he and Microsoft wanted to "shock and awe" the industry at GDC with the unveiling of his long-shrouded, top-secret 'Dimitri' project. They may have missed its originally planned GDC unveiling in March, but "shock and awe" is exactly what they did at E3 in Los Angeles last week, with the unveiling of Natal.

At the end of Microsoft's E3 press conference, I was left speechless when Natal was revealed. Thinking about Natal's potential, I'd say it's one of the most inspiring things I've seen revealed at a press conference in well over ten years of sitting through them. However, not everyone is as convinced as I am

Natal is a new peripheral for Xbox 360 that currently exists in a very early work-in-progress form. This new, 'full body motion sensing' technology may be revolutionary for interactive entertainment, and quite frankly, leaves things like EyeToy, Wii MotionPlus, and Sony's new motion sensing controllers for PS3 - also revealed last week - in the dust. Anyone who doesn't yet understand why, this article is for you.

There's a lot of positive buzz about Natal, but I was surprised to see how much doubt and even indifference there is about it after talking to everyone about it over the last week. Critics and fence-sitters of Natal seem to consistently be saying one of only a few things against it. I'm going to explain why they're missing the point, and why this thing is the real deal, based on my first-hand experience with it behind closed doors, as well as chats with project manager Branden Powell, and the heavyweight developers who showed it off, Kudo Tsunoda and Peter Molyneux.

The first thing detractors are saying is that we, as serious gamers, aren't interested in jumping about in front of the TV. The second thing they're saying is that there is no release date in sight. And the final thing they're saying is that they get it, but they just don't believe that it works - and that they noticed glitches and bugs when it was demonstrated at the conference.

OK, so first off, serious gamers aren't interested in jumping about in front of the TV. Right? Irrelevant. David Cage, developer of promising PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain, is one of the people in this category - this was his sentiment when I asked his opinion on Natal last week. And yet, the very next question I asked him about Sony's newly unveiled motion controller, provoked a more positive, "variety is good" type response. This sort of illustrates my point: everyone who's trying to innovate with motion control is in the same boat here, so to make the demographic argument against one solution and not another really only exposes some form of platform bias. Moreover, the popularity of Wii with all kinds of gamer, and the proven willingness of millions of people to move about in front of their TV, are facts which cancel out the argument.

It's also obvious that Natal has the potential for many types of experience, not just the kind that will give you a workout: while the tech demos that Kudo showed on stage (and which I've since had a go on) are fairly active experiences, the racing game experience (a modified, controller-less version of Burnout) and Peter Molyneux's character interaction experience ('Milo and Kate' - formerly 'Project Dimitri', as we have known it for years now) are far less physically demanding - and yet, certainly no less engaging; both are completely new experiences, that highlight the advanced abilities of Natal's functionality.

Natal is, in fact, light years ahead of the game control methods you've got in Wii MotionPlus, or Sony's new motion controller (both technically pretty comparable as far as I can tell). Why? You've seen the videos of this thing being demonstrated, right? Were it not for Kudo explaining to me exactly how Natal works, I'd only be able to guess 'by magic'. The functionality of a device which you hold, containing accelerometers and such, is easy to comprehend. But how this Natal product enables an Xbox 360 to render an entirely digital, on-screen version of you as your Xbox 360 avatar (or anything for that matter - you could be E.T. if you want), and have it move about in real time in perfect synchrony with you anywhere in the room? No controller can offer that fluidity of movement and control. That is surely magic, especially since the player is not holding any device of any kind, and not wearing any white markers as they would be in a traditional motion capture environment, like you've seen in 'making of' documentaries.

He says Natal is "light years ahead" of Wii MotionPlus and Sony's wand. But he didn't address the most important problem, which is... how will Microsoft surpass the lack of buttons, triggers and analog sticks without causing a whole new set of problems?

Oh, one final thing:

Great, just what we needed, another Natal thread reiterating the same thing we've known since the MS presentation.

Yes, Natal is amazing and awe inspiring and light years ahead of Wii Remote, but on par with Virtual Reality of 1992. Natal is also light years away from being a finished product.

I'm not a Natal hater, I just think that we have a year or more before it hits the market. Hyping it up this early is not only pointless, it can also be potentially damaging, as the finished product might be scaled back in what it is capable of.

Worst responce to the point ever...

Voice reconition technology is light years ahead of keyboards because it works like magic!

nevermind that anyone who has ever called an automated receptionist can tell you the technology is frustratingly imprecise and half the time i end up just talking to a real person anyways.  natal has problems, i'd guess at least 90% of those problems are related to the software specifically in how it interpits the input.  still doesn't make the problems go away.

@kitler53: Cueil didn't copy the whole article, you have to open it to see the response to that part.

natal here, natal there, we don't even now when it releases...

Being that I think there are many people who will bring in up anyways, I will stay away from talking about how the technology may not be as mature as it needs to be, designers may not be ready for the concepts that need to exist, or how people might not be able to psychologically handle a "Controller Less" game yet ...

There are many factors people who like to hype Natal don't want to consider which can have a very negative impact on its sales potential. One of the major factors is the timing of the release, and without even considering that it is a late generation add on and those (historically) have performed very poorly, there are many reasons why this is a problem. In 2005/2006 the release of the XBox 360 and pending release of the PS3 alienated many gamers because the price of the consoles was (insanely) high and they were only focused on a very narrow selection of games designed to appeal to the "Hardcore" demographic. When Natal is eventually launched Nintendo and Third party publishers will be delivering more content which is targeting this broad demographic of gamers in a month than Natal will (probably) be able to release in its lifetime ... These gamers are not being ignored anymore and have little reason to feel alienated which makes it dramatically harder to convince them to switch consoles.

nevermind that we're talking about the next generation of this technology, which is, by all accounts, already light-years ahead of the clearly not cutting edge technology being used by automated receptionists.

i'm sure Natal has problems, but the "well, I've seen the older version of the tehcnology and it was clunky" excuse has been used by short-sighted peopel throughout history. if people judged future technology by past attempts, we wouldn't have airplanes, advanced PCs, or even electricity.

Read it all. It wasn't particularly revelatory nor was it convincing (seemed aggressively defensive) but it certainly argued strongly why Nintendo should be worried (non wii owners are more interested in this?, Miyamoto approves it). Well there is no evidence of this yet, nor a price, nor proof of it working with 4 players on the one device.

I just don't get all the Natal excitement... I loved the unveil and I know there are some neat things you can do with it. But I have to say that more often than not it will just be a supplemental option on games.

I may just be missing some of the important information? Aside from face recognition and a microphone, what exactly does it do that the PSeye doesn't?