daroamer said:
I REALLY wish people would understand what the hell Natal is before speaking. If Natal was nothing more than Eyetoy it wouldn't be getting the buzz from developers that it is. What people seem to fail to realize is that it's NOT just a camera and microphone. It has software built in to analyze and interpret the data is receives. For example, any microphone can listen to you and record what you're saying, but it doesn't UNDERSTAND you. That job requires software to interpret the sounds that the microphone is hearing into words that games can understand. Sure, the developer can program their own speech recognition software, but Natal is built on the Microsoft speech recognition software that they have been developing for YEARS. This is complex stuff. The same goes for the realtime skeletal tracking and face recognition. Beyond the fact that Eyetoy cannot see depth, something has to take this data and construct it into something that developers and actually use. Face recognition? Same thing. Eyetoy can see if there is a face there, but can it determine who you are? No. All of these are things that different devices can do to varying degrees, but what Microsoft has done is combine these into a cohesive package that is more than the sum of it's parts. Developers don't need to take raw data like sounds, images and depth information and create software to interpret that data into something USEABLE, Natal does that internally. All developers need to do is access the output and THAT is why they are excited. |
All of this sounds like a lot of R&D which does back up his point on MS charging a lot for the peripheral. Sony's wand is much simpler by comparison, so in all likelihood it will be cheaper. I believe Impulsivity was orginally commenting on price so in that respect what you are saying backs up his orginal point. If MS can overcharge on standard peripherals then what are they going to charge on a peripheral where the tech is actually relatively advanced?
I'm still not entirely convinced Natal will deliver everything it promises, but if it does MS may get away with a high price point (dependent on marketing).