Hah, way to beat me to the Amen ;)

If Natal runs off of USB, which I think most of us agree it will, I agree it'd be kind of fun to see what the PS3 could do with it.  Best we'd likely see from that though is a PS3 running linux that's hacked a natal to work somewhat haha.

Hmmm. a few points not just to you but to the person claiming to be a student of computer engineering ( the 1 millionth on the net ). There is a CPU and Ram in Natal. M$ talk about ADVANCED streaming for a reason. That advanced streaming is not available in todays USB's on PC's or any other configuration. M$ explicitly designed the 360 with that in mind. Is this what Natal is designed for? Who knows. Is it possible sure.

Also, it doesn't have to even be good enough to enhance the games that much. Remember the N64? Expansion pak that enhanced the capable resolution? Natal could simply be used to enhance all future 360 games to 1080p 60 FPs and nothing else. Instantly the games would become so crisp. That is a definate possibility, after all I refuse to believe that M$ designed a much faster USB with a different set of rules for no reason. And no it wouldnt work on PS3, as it doesnt have M$ advanced streaming USB for a start and isnt registered on the motherboard directly to the ram, CPU and GPU.  

I just read the OP and to suggest that MS had NATAL in mind all along? Tell that to Nintendo who released their system with motion controls because that proves Nintendo had it in mind all along. And, due to the success of the Wii plus the responses from MS and Sony 4 years on? This kind of proves both systems were NEVER originally design with these add-ons in mind.

I wouldn't go deceiving my self with these so called "nuggets" and glean so much just because the 360 USB port is now some miraculous proprietary connection that now has direct access to the CPU/GPU. I don't buy that. The OP is simply gleaning far too much.

This is not me trying to take away from the potential of what Natal may be. It may have it's own processor but to suggest the original 360 spec was made for it is just baloney, if you ask me.

Well you may want to read the 360 manual which comes with a 360. Try and get one from 2005. Read what it says about the USB's. They truly are different for something.

i lol'd!

do you think that the cpu and memory of natal will be enough to have WAAAAAY better graphics than uncharted 2??????????????????????????

REALLY?????????????????????

stop lying yourself, the cpu and the added memory it's for the NATAL USE and will be used just for the NATAL GAMES.

instead of saying bullshit you can actually search for the camera specs and see what amount of memory and which cpu will have inside. again, it's IMPOSSIBLE to boost the graphic experience with an addon....

@Selnor.

Yes different as in making sure they are locked down, that you can't run pirated games from a HDD, that you can't connect open hardware to it. See, that makes a lot more sense as to why they are proprietary. It is the most logical assumption.

Thats software innitiated. Otherwise people wouldnt have hacked that and made that possible already. Thats got nothing to do with the actual USB's themselves. They are faster and connect differently to the 360 than PC and PS3 USB's.

@Selnor

Look, believe what you will. I just can't see it. Do you have any documentation that the 360 USB ports are more than what they seem? I don't think so. What the OP said is nothing more than wishful thinking.

The most likely assumption here, being the USB's are proprietary due to "lock down", probably means that's exactly why they are designed that way. Remember, we are talking Pre 2005 technology here.

All I am saying is that the OP's theory is just higly unlikely. I know where I would put the safe bet.

Also, where's the doco that the PS3 controller uses an SPU. Those SPU's are pretty amazing if they can utilise substantial bandwidth over a Bluetooth connection. Again, the assumptions do not make sense with what we know about the underlying technology.

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/ps3-wand-features-rumble-and-multiplayer-609828

"In the latest developer brief leak Sony mentions that there will be "SPU overhead" which will have "an impact on memory" when these additional PS3 Wand features – something TechRadar will be sure to quiz games devs about when we speak to them about any PS3 Wand games currently planned."

So essentially, Natal games will have better graphics than PS3 wand games as the PS3 has to use up memory and SPU or maybe 2 to run it's Wands. Whereas the 360 still has it's original horsepower to do graphics physics etc. Considering that I personally see nothing in the difference of graphics between the 2 already, this would definately take PS3 down a notch for motion controlled games graphics against Natal games.

Ahh ok but after reading that, doesn't it make sense there will be over head? If you have to add in additional code to use a "new" feature that has to track motion, of course some sort of cycles will be needed. In other words, it's stating the proverbial obvious.

So yeah, Natal seems to have additional CPU power BUT that does not necessarily translate to better graphics in games. All it means is that the tracking in hardware is done by NATAL. And what about the additional feature of voice recognition?

So I can see a minor over head for the additional tracking of motion in the Sony Wand but I doubt it's going to result in a severe degradation of graphics. We will see. I can see NATAL probably having little or no effect on the visual quality of 360 games, which is a great thing.

We are all making some pretty big assumptions here. To me, the more important question is how each system is going to work in practice, how they work for how they are designed, rather than all this "gleaned" impact on the hardware they are matched to.

Again, strategically speaking, I reckon Sony and MS seriously missed the boat here. Can't see either being a raging success. You don't go splitting your userbase down the middle like that. I think both will fail from a user base penetration point of view. But I hope I am wrong.