A lot of it will have to do with the sophistication of the voice recognition tech, yes - have we gotten any impressions that suggest how good it is at doing that?

Don't forget that Milo was able to specifically recognize Claire by her appearance. With the fact that the camera knows what a player looks liek in mind, I don't think other people or animals should be much of a problem.

Regarding functions like pausing, they could simply require that you say 'pause' on its own and with no other words.

They have already solved the problem of people walking in front of others. Mainly due to the well known nature of the human skeleton. It is in interviews and such, Google it perhaps.

I thought Natal was able to recognise different voices/a person's appearance.

So if I wanted to, I could start shaking my ass behind somebody to make their character dance while they're trying to fight, and then say "pause pause pause pause pause pause pause" from anywhere in the room to ruin their game? Sounds pretty fun for griefing purposes.

They match a voice, skeleton, and face to a person, say player 1.  So unless you are signed into the game, your voice could not pause the game.  As for the shaking your butt behind someone, that would not register as the same skeleton, based purely on depth measurements.

Why is that relevant? I, for one, will be looking for a website that I can get my mercury free incandescents once 2012 comes around.  I suspect the software will have a "fix" for the incandescent problem.

NATAL has the ablility to "scan" and object, which can then be used in game, so no, I don't think MS will produce a "Wii mote" of any kind. Also, from what I understand, MS will make sure that all games that play using NATAL will also play using the origional controller. Also, the voice recognition works in tandom with the facial regognition to detect a person's mood. So I suspect that that will be less of a problem. Lastly, NATAL eliminates the need for a "Wiimote" or anything like that, so all this talk about MS doing something along that line is just silly.   

There's no way I'm letting Microsoft cut off all my skin to analyze my skeleton with their skeleton recognition software just so I can throw paint at a wall and talk to an emo kid by a river.

But you could live forever inside the cloud.  Immortality is yours, take it.

Well right now you can just sit next your friends and constantly try to knock the game controller out of his hands, or tickle him while he's playing, or shout expetives in his ear at the top of your lungs.  What does being annoying have to do with Natal?