It changed the head/hair shape and body size of the avatar each time a new person jumped.

I just went back and rewatched it, your right.  It does appear to change their hair and body size.  I never noticed that before.

Then clearly you weren't around when the Wii tech was first shown off

I don't recall it having a tech demo.

That seemed to just be a silhouette dumped on the screen by the camera.  It didn't seem to affect gameplay.  They all had giant hands and fingers, and their bodies were segmented for scoring purposes.

Very very basic tech so far.  Nintendo turned Pong into Wii Sports Tennis and Wii Play Ping Pong, and Microsoft is turning Breakout into Ricochet.  They're following Nintendo's strategy perfectly by taking an arcade classic many people know and updating it with more interaction with the player's body.  And the stupid name.  And the late night talk show circuit advertising for the casuals.

And the facial recognition stuff is a buzzword until it's proven to exist, let alone be affordable.

And the skateboard part?  "Scan!"  Baloney.  They expect me to buy Natal AND a skateboard?  Why can't I just say "Skateboard!"?  What they actually have is Ricochet (which looks fun) and Burnout (which looks too imprecise, but they have time to try to make it better).  Everything else in that demo video (karate, tween gossiping and fashion, skateboarding, especially Milo) was just pipe dreams.  Remember the first Wii video?  It showed the remote being used as dental tools, flashlights, and all kinds of stuff that never happened.

Microsoft's always making video demos of crazy future-tech that they won't have for a decade.  I don't see how the Natal video is any different.  I'll believe it when I feel it myself.

Microsoft claims they'll be doing all this in 2019:

Well it is nice to see this getting a lot of attention. Definitely an interesting concept and something "new" that people can get into. Although, personally, I don't like the direction of where it'll take gaming. I like having a physical medium that connects me to the character on screen. You take that away and you are fully aware you are not "in the game". Natal is definitely the opposite of MS's old slogan "Jump in". As with Natal you definitely "jump out" of the game.

I think Natal would work better if it came in some form of VR because otherwise you are quite aware you aren't the character on screen. You perform all of their actions but what if they have a weapon in their hand. You don't of course. Wiimote/Sony Wand gave an answer to that.

Not hating on it, I just don't like the direction as much as I do Wiimote/Sony's wand. I think they immerse yourself more into the game. I couldn't imagine playing my Tiger Woods 10 wii game right now simply by swinging and having no wiimote. It would feel less real. Guess it is just a personal preference. But we'll see how it progresses. However, I must say I'm quite surprised in the change in media towards Natal. So much negativity, hate, and disappointment towards Revolution and its controller when it was first announced. No one thought it would really work well and many were quite skeptical about its success. Funny, that when MS introduces something I see none of this questioning from the media whatsoever and instant love fort he product. Either something is going on I don't know of, or simply the media is that biased.

Welcome Xbox to Minigames, fitness games, petz games, and shovelware!

Well, thank you for the nice reply...at least we can now have a civilized convo without being blamed as a fanboy.

You are right in the fact that there aren't many games on the Wii which caters to those who lust for violence, gore, and cinematics of mass proportions. Sure, we may have Metroid Trilogy coming out, Red Steel 2 (which is showing a lot of promise), The Conduit (which isn't that great, but it is a step in the right direction) and others, but they don't have the hype that matches with other games on the HD console.

Red Steel 2 and the upcoming Zelda Wii game may be able to have an Elder Scrolls-type experience with motion controls, but it seems you lost all trust in the Wii and replaced it with the future potential of the Natal Project.

My question to you is this: what makes you think this peripheral will fulfill your needs and requirements? Just recently, Shane Kim was quoted as such that they are not aiming at the current "casual" gamers nor are they aiming at the PS2 gamers who haven't bought a current gen console, but they are targeting the 60% households who don't have a console at all and haven't played any videogames when it comes to the NATAL project.

If that is the case, where do the "core" gamers come in? Nowhere, that's where.

Actually, they have stated many, many times that they are going to integrate this with core games.  Look at Kudo interviews from E3 and such.  Just how they plan on doing that, your guess is as good as mine.  But it will most likely be a mix of controller and Natal for core games.  I will not really care for that.  Give me a disc of Tron game where I can jump around and stuff and I am there day 1.  You hear me Bungie.  Make it happen.