My problem with Project Natal.

[JaggedSac]

@WereKitten - Two pointers. That is one benefit of Natal. Speed is another benefit. Combine the two and you can get some very complicated things going on. Onscreen buttons could replace keyboard commands. One hand is touching these buttons while another is moving units. Without a mouse having been invented, would the RTS genre have never been created? Were RTS games a function of the mouse being available? I would say yes to both. So RTS is a good indication of an input device providing the means for a new genre.

Additional motion needed by your body would be a negative. Some people do not like flailing about. But as can be seen by the Wii. It is tolerated by the masses.

Natal is NOT just about 3-d motion tracking. It is about the entire package of vocal, gesture, facial recognitions plus the 3-d motion tracking put in one device with one API that requires no additional processing from the platform. This is very enabling for developers.

They are wanting Natal to be used mainly for intuitive interaction with a television. Not necessarily for games as I have described several other uses, such as educational, physical, and business. It encompasses all of the elements of human expression in one device. Physical, audible, and visual. I guess it doesn't encompass smell, but that will probably come in due time. If I am displeased with something in a game, I can flick it off, say something deragatory, and have an angry face. Natal could detect every single one of those actions and provide a developer the means to execute a reaction to those actions. What that could be used for, I don't know, but it is there for people creative enough to embrace it. I don't know about you, but a game that reacts to vocal tones and facial gestures while I am playing would blow my mind. Sure this could be done already, but developers would have to combine several technologies and pay for them if they do not want to develop them themselves. Let alone require the client to have hardware that does both. And then the software would be taking the performance hits and not the hardware. So you will lose in either the gameplay or graphics department. Natal will be a very enabling device for developers. We shall see what exactly developers can create with it.