It's seems anyone who is skeptical about Natal and is not taken in by it's hyped must be X360 haters/ Sony fanboys. I'm like bobobologna I'm skeptical how useful Natal will actually be. Like someone testing out Burnout with Natal said while Natal works he still rather play with a controller.
Even with head tracking for GT5 there will be some gamers who, after the novelty wears off, would rather race without head tracking. Head tracking with race games isn't really necessary unlike flight sims.

Did they just give the award to a concept video and a few tech demos?

Wouldn't it make sense to, you know, wait until they RELEASE the thing?

Simple answer to this is no.  But the ones who continually try and say its just a PS Eye Toy or continually do the FUD/miss information stuff probably are.

true story. I do not get this hate. Why can't we just wait and see what Natal will be like? No that would be too easy. We just can agree it sucks, will be overpriced and we have had something like this before...

Assuming some of the other contenders are already commercially available my only issue with this is that these awards should have 2 categories: Products currently in market; and up and coming products with working prototypes.

Actually having a product on the market, selling and delivering on its promises is important for entertainment technology. A product that is yet to be released shouldn't be competing with products that are delivering what they set out to deliver.

Otherwise Natal is pretty nifty technology.

The only reason I see natal succeeding is the price is reasonable. Otherwise it would flop hard.

In a way that's a reaction to the premature optimism around it as well as BS that people with their minds right can see straight through.

In many ways we've been predictively programmed to accept this technology, movies like Minority Report and stuff. You look at it and you go "ha! my friend! I've seen you before!" subconsciously, they don't even realize it. But not everybody has been brought up on movies, series and advertising like that, or even the idea of it being interesting. So they look at your enthusiasm and genuinely don't get it, because in a real world everybody SHOULD be a little skeptical of what was presented there.

However a circle has been formed by the people who had been imagining this technology for a long time, and even other people who weren't part of that dream got sucked in with the help of the media. And the ones who don't really subscribe to those tastes, are in a more real worldly state of skepticism. It's not hate, really. Their skepticism is being a little exacerbated by your blind faith in the technology, which they can see you doing, and so they overcompensate their points based on your unjustified optimism that has no real basis or practical evidence for yet.

Perfectly said.

Who exactly is being overly optimistic?  I have doubts about this tech and every other tech that is coming out.  I don't think anyone here is "blindly" optimistic when it comes to the natal.  But that doesn't mean I can't be happy that someone is trying to bring the future to us, NOW!  The people who are most optimistic are the ones with actual hands on time with the device (PopScience).  So if anything it should reinforce our hopes and dreams for Natal.  So I still don't see why the hate flows so much.   The only thing that can be said about it is this, some bias supporters think it will turn the tides in this console war and they are desperate for it to fail.  And you can see this by their posts. 

This thread is actually very tame when it comes to the natal hate.  But if you do a little digging around on these here forums you will see what some of us are talking about.  

Ok, tell me how being able to recognize an individual's face would have anything to do with gameplay?  Cool, the XBox360 can recognize you as you, and log onto XBox Live automatically, but the last time I checked, logging into XBox Live wasn't a game.  Milo seems interesting as a tech demo, but I don't see how they are going to make a game out of it.  Maybe we'll see more at E3, but until them, I can't figure out what exactly the hubbub is about.  Maybe my imagination is poor, so please enlighten me with some great examples of how Natal specifically can add to my gaming experience.

As for software, maybe you didn't bother reading the description of the Youtube video, but Sony has already created the software for facial recognition.  Notice how it says Sony's Vision Library for the Playstation Eye.  I can assure you that they aren't talking about a building where you can borrow books.  I don't know whether or not this has been released to developers yet, or if it is going to be released to developers at all.  I would say that it would be pointless to do all this work and not release it to developers, but Sony has done some pretty weird things in the past.

Also, I don't think that I've ever said that Natal sucks.  Or that I think it will fail.  Or that I don't think it will ever be useful for gaming.  I'm just saying that I personally have no clue what they are going to do with it.  I can't believe how many people are getting so hyped for this.  Maybe you all can do me a favor and tell me what you envision this hardware doing because I don't see how the Burnout demo or the Katamari demo made the games better.  I'm ignoring the "casual" games because they don't interest me that much.

I will agree with you that Microsoft is making a complete package.  Natal is going to be big.  I can definitely see Microsoft pricing it aggressively to get the adoption rate high.  And providing games that take advantage of Natal.  But I honestly don't know what those games would look like, and whether those games would truly be unique and something only Natal could provide.  I really doubt that anyone from Popular Science has seen those games.  I don't care that they were blown away by the Burnout demo or the ability to look at the bottom of your avatar's shoe.  Because I don't care about avatars, and I would rather play a racing game with a gamepad or racing wheel.  If I didn't like using the Wiimote for Mariokart, which at least provided a bit of tactile feedback, why would I want to use a completely imaginary wheel?

Basically, I'm skeptical as hell.  If Microsoft can show me the games, then I'll be a believer.  Until then, I'll always be skeptical.  And for the record, I think Sony's motion control is going to be a complete flop.

EDIT:  Also, I never said that Eyetoy can do everything that Natal can do.  Please read my post more carefully.  I said I'm not sure how much Natal will add to GAMING over what a traditional camera can do.  Seeing the bottom of your Avatar's shoe isn't a game.  People seem to be excited about head tracking to lean in an FPS or look around in a racing game, but clearly that can be done with a regular camera.  I'm sure that full body tracking is cool for casual games, but for core games, I honestly don't know what you would do with it.  Again, if you have any ideas, please feel free to share them with me.

I'm actually very excited about headtracking.  I always wanted to get a TrackIR, but it was way too expensive for my tastes.  It would be awesome to get headtracking from Natal or the PSEye.  But as I said before, it's something the PSEye, a regular camera can do, so I don't know what's so special about Natal.