Project natal PS3 killer? or 360 killer?

[Kantor]

JaggedSac said:

Kantor said:

damndl0ser said:
Come on, the alpha version of Natal is already leaps and bounds better than what the eye is.

I want to believe that. But I have asked you twice, and you've avoided the question: What can NATAL do that the PS Eye can't?

Natal is basically the joining of 3 technologies together into one cohesive and developer friendly package.  Vocal recognition, facial recognition, and motion recognition(through the use of IR and the creation of a skeletal system).  All of which are handled via the onboard chip on Natal so that the actual 360 does not have to spend cpu time processing the outputs from the camera.  Sure these technologies are not new, and can be done on other devices(not many do the IR stuff though).  What is good for Natal, is the fact that all three are there for developers to use without them having to develop them themselves or pay for a third party solution.

As far as how this is different from the EyeToy.  The EyeToy has to base motion detection and distance calculations on changes in colors and edge detection on pixels from its camera.  This is much more inaccurate than actually having the distances per pixel such as Natal does with IR.

Thank you. Natal, then, is superior technology-wise, but the number of applications is still not huge. A lot of games could use it, but not use it as the sole control method, unless you want an entire game consisting of talking to a little boy who lives next to a pond.