Why does everyone think Natal will be huge?

[greenmedic88]

The success of Natal depends 100% upon the strength and quality of software support.

This is a "No Duh" statement, but there are a lot of people calling this the second coming of the Xbox without having played the games as an insider or even having a decent idea of what's going to be released upon debut or what's in the pipeline.

If only a handful of developers support the platform (I have to stress NOT token support but top tier development team support), then those efforts will have to be something really distinctive and special for it to gain momentum.

Why is the press latching onto Natal? It offers intriguing possibilities in gaming. But you can't write glowing reviews on nothing (what we currently have beyond closed door tech demos and last year's E3 demo), so the focus is all in "the possibilities."

Partly I want to say that hyping something new or different before it's ready is one part wanting to sell more magazines/generate more web hits (Big News in anticipation sells regardless of whether it has a real impact upon release), and another part journalists not wanting to look like they were asleep at the keyboard in the instance that Natal is a smashing success.

Nobody ever writes retractions if they say X product will be the future when in reality the general public response turns out to be a muffled snore (ie Segue). On the other hand, they do look pretty foolish if they dismiss or overlook a product and it turns out to be a huge success (ie Wii).

As for Xbox fans, including those who said "motion controls are dumb," Natal is more or less the platform's 4th quarter Hail Mary play through the end of the generation. If met with a lukewarm response, it's nothing but looking forward to regular solid soft support (nothing wrong here) and hyping possibilities for the next Xbox.