you should know better when sony says spring release. Natal does have the media behind it, but its too early to estamate so much.

Fair enough. Wands could come late in the year to. I guess we will have to see. But I feel pretty confident in my analysis.

We don't know Sony plans about Motion Control. All we know is that they intend to show a lot of them at TGS.

At spring, why not a 349 € PS3 with PSEye + 1 Wand  or  a 299 € PS3 With PSEye only (would laugh if Ps Eye can allow to browse the XMB and PS3 services (Vidzone, Movie Store etc...) and shuting PS3 with a "Good Night" a la Microsoft )

Honestly, aren't we looking at being close to the end of this generation by the time it rolls around?

With NATAL launching in 2010, I really don't see Microsoft launching a new, next-gen console until 2013 or even 2014. The resources involved in this relaunch are significant. If anything, I think NATAL is serving as the testbed to even see what the next Xbox will have: If NATAL technology is something consumers want in the next-box or not.

And having said that, I really can't see why MS would relaunch a console, only to kill it within 2 years. The only possibility I'd see is if MS kept supporting the 360 well after a next-box launched, forcing devs to work on NATAL360 and a NATAL720 port.

Either way, if MS pulls off the NATAL launch, they will have effectively done what no console has done - relaunch a product with an entirely new branding. Sega couldn't pull it off with the CD/32X, so this will be very interesting.

One other thing I'd mention about the precedent of this happening:

Nintendo has had a great track record of breathing life into dead consoles with sweeping hardware revisions. They've done it twice: Once with the Gameboy/Gameboy Color, and another with the DS revisions which were decent sized overhauls. If MS does it right, we could essentially see the 360 break the typical sales peak at year 3, and maybe even peak at year 5 or 6 - a dream for Microsoft, really.

Selnor, we don't always see eye-to-eye but I'd like to lend you some praise for that extremely astute observation that the two companies are now perhaps less reactionary to one another and instead both more focused on their respective long-term plans.

Also, you make good points about Sony's motion controller (cf. your 3 point post at the bottom of the previous page) but I would just add quickly that whilst 3rd party support may not be huge on the Sony wand's launch, you can never underestimate Sony's 1st party strength. Certain inhouse studios are quite taciturn on their tasks at the moment, so hopefully Sony will have lots of exciting surprises come Spring 2010.

Well it really focuses on the fact of how much NATAL Projecrs will cost... it seems like a bad move dev-wise but i think at the very least they'll break even.

hell no.

good point.

I think Natal will move consoles. Not just a big spike, the sales will be sustainable.

The media will go crazy about it, MS will advertise this like crazy, it will be bundled and the developer support will be there. I can't see it fail in any way.

Sega is working on it, Square Enix is working with it, Rare is focussed on it, Take Two is playing around with it, THQ got them as well, Lionhead has at least one Natal-thing coming up (Milo), EA has them, too.

And I would not be surprised if the Microsoft Game Studios are working on this as well.

A fitness-game is coming, I bet my money on this. MS already said that Natal will be their next generation without the need to launch a new console. So this gen will still last for a very long time.