I know I shouldn't be but I remain skeptical. I think the fact he said that developers were getting their kits "today" (and he meant today as in a literal sense) kind of bewildered me. That kind of means it is a ways off and why would it be today? To keep secret I guess, is the answer but obviously others have had it earlier. Lionheart?

The other thing - dividing your userbase. Yeah Sega did this with a CD drive. Consoles are set in stone. They are not PC's - the hardware does not evolve. I see Natal really an Xbox 720 thing.

I am also skeptical about the voice recognition with the Milo demo. Even a beefed up i7 PS with grunt well past a console would struggle processing that type of "on the fly" unscripted AI.

I have no doubt it may be possible now but not on 3 year old hardware.

Sorry, skeptic here, "marketing speak" awareness needed :).

I hope I am wrong.

It is Lionhead.  And even they only worked on Milo for a couple weeks and they are first party.

Ahh yeah my bad about the Lionhead. Typing too fast. They did say they had it for a couple of months, not weeks.

My bad, just watched it again.  He did say a few months.  But my point still stands.

hehe, well I think I kind of gave an answer my self. "To keep it secret". But my point still stands too - it's obviously early stages. This thing appears to be a ways off.

My other point - dividing your userbase. This is the main problem. I think strategically they would be better saving it for the next Xbox which would also have the grunt to drive such AI and complex physics. That is not meant to be a criticism of the current 360. I don't believe any current console can really do what the marketing here is claiming.

I think you are all giving this thing way too much thought.

Natal on the 360 will just be a testbed for 720 implementation of the feature.

It is interesting however they've chosen this instead of a waggle-wand... Nintendo's waggle-wand is a hybrid and is introducing millions of people into the concept of "gaming controller" while Microsoft wants to drive people away from it. 

@bitmap Frogs

So we are in effect, agreeing. I said this, "I don't believe any current console can really do what the marketing here is claiming."

That's the same as saying that Natal on the 360 will just be a testbed. It's too late in the cycle to make this thing really "work".

Great concept but needs to be a standard part of the whole platform.

But hey, they (the guys on stage) were the ones repeatedly marketing Natal as being able to work with every 360 ever sold and to be sold.

This is why "marketing" is basically what it is. I'm trying to read the reality of it. Hence why I started with everything I said here using the word "Skeptic".

Thank Nintendo. If it wasn't for the Wii, Microsoft would never had tried to make something like this.

--- moved to proper thread. Sucks to have 2 windows open

Nah, we don't agree. You are just trying to spin it in order to pursue an agenda and making false conclusions to further your non-stated goal.

Natal will work and they'll get things going on with it on the 360. 

Testbed as in they want time for developers to get acquinted with it, get corporations to spend R+D budget to find out what works what doesn't and refine the experience so when it comes back as an integral part of the console it offers a better experience than early Wii waggle games. Sort of how XboxLive was already on the first Xbox and they used all the feedback and years of R+D to fully harness it on the 360.

But carry on please, you are doing damage control on many threads atm and are probably rather busy.