How do you know that? How do you know _how many_ chips are in Natal, actually? We know there is an Asic that controls the tof camera, there must be a chip that processes sound input, there could be a chip that controls and correlates the video frame inputs from the two cameras, there could be a chip that processes all the input, there is a chip that sends everything to the XBox.. so which chip just got the boot (notice the blurb talks about removing _a_ chip, not about removing _the_ chips)? If Natal went software only, then one would expect to lose _at least_ a full core and 32mbyte (wag) if you want to see everything that was promised with Natal. The decisive and most expensive part of Natal is the tof stuff, so saving a few $ by removing _the_ processing chip (and probably some ram) does not really save a lot of $, but makes things a lot harder for game programmers.

New Scientist has an interesting article about NATAL here http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.800-microsofts-bodysensing-buttonbusting-controller.html

A LONG-lived videogaming skill could be on the way out this year as Microsoft hones an add-on to its Xbox 360 console aimed at making button-studded games controllers obsolete. The device, called Natal after the city in northern Brazil, allows players to control a game using only their body movements and voice. Robbie Bach, Microsoft's president of entertainment and devices, announced at the CES show in Las Vegas, Arizona, this week that Natal would go on sale in November.

Microsoft unveiled Natal in June 2009 at the E3 games industry expo in Los Angeles, but revealed little about how it works. Now the company has allowed New Scientist access to the device and its creators to discover more details.

A player standing anywhere between 0.8 and 4 metres from Natal is illuminated with infrared light. A monochrome video camera records how much of that light they reflect, using the brightness of the signal to approximate their distance from the device and capture their movements in 3D.

This means Natal doesn't require users to wear markers on their body - unlike the technology used by movie studios to animate CGI figures.

Motion capture normally requires massive processing power, and paring down the software to run on an everyday games console was a serious challenge, says Natal's lead developer, Alex Kipman. "Natal has to work on the existing hardware without taking too much hardware processing away from the games developers."

Microsoft collected "terabytes" of data of people in poses likely to crop up during game play, both in motion capture studios and their own homes. Frames from the home videos were manually labelled to identify key body parts, and the data was then fed into "expert system" software running on a powerful cluster of computers. The result was a 50-megabyte software package that can recognise 31 different body parts in any video frame.

"When we train this 'brain' we are telling it: this is the head, this is the shoulder. And we're doing that over millions of frames," says Kipman. "When it sees a new image it can tell you the probability it's seeing a certain body part based on that historical information."

Natal also includes software that has a basic understanding of human anatomy. Using its knowledge that, for example, hands are connected to arms, which are attached to shoulders, it can refine its guesses about body pose to recognise where body parts are even when they are hidden from Natal's camera.

"It correctly positions your hand even if it's held behind your back," Kipman says. "It knows the hand can only be in one place." That's important because during multiplayer games there won't always be a clear view of both players at all times.

He says Natal consumes just 10 to 15 per cent of the Xbox's computing resources and it can recognise any pose in just 10 milliseconds. It needs only 160 milliseconds to latch on to the body shape of a new user stepping in front of it.

The system locates body parts to within a 4-centimetre cube, says Kipman. That's far less precise than lab-based systems or the millimetre precision of Hollywood motion capture. But Douglas Lanman, who works on markerless 3D interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and is not involved with Natal, says that this will likely be accurate enough for gamers.

Lanman is watching closely to see what kind of games Natal makes possible, and how they are received. "Will users find them as compelling as they found the Wii games? Is it important to have physical buttons? We'll know soon."

Those kind of questions, and a desire to move away from the controller-focused interaction that has dominated for decades, are central to Natal, Kipman says. "We think input using existing controllers is the barrier, and by erasing that we can realistically say: all you need to play is life experience."

Yeah, saw that article myself.

For what I imagine the average Natal game will require that shouldn't matter, but it could limit their ability to mix Natal with a game designed to push the 360 to the max - for example, Halo 3 to me from an engine point of view felt like Halo 2.5.  Not a criticism, more a function of MS wanting the game out pretty early in 360 lifecycle.  Reach looks to me like the first Halo game built to really exploit 360, however with this change I now wonder whether they could mix Natal with Reach so easily if they want Reach to push the envelope on visuals as they seem to.

I think the move makes sense though.  Natal's success won't be down to having it add some extra elements to major games using the normal controller, but attracting the so called 'casual' audience, and that shouldn't require games that use to much of the 360 CPU that the Natal downgrade matters.

So I think it makes sense as a move, and won't make much difference overall - for example, I doubt they'd drop it just to lower the price if they knew it would also have a major impact on the games underway for Natal.

I agree.  But I really hope they do not add Natal stuff to Reach.

Yeah, I wouldn't either - I just figured it might be tempting for them.  However, I would like Reach to push the 360.  Compared to PS3 the 360 has seen less custom engines design for it, and I would be genuinely interested in seeing that.  Anyway, that's going OT I guess from Natal to Reach!

We know this is false. CES 2010 keynote confirms that Natal will launch as stated at E3. 50% hardware and 50% software.

LOL. Did noone notice the source was Thesixaxis? And it can be found nowhere else on the net?

I think this is legit selnor. Maybe it isn't, but even a person working on Natal said it would be consuming the XBox's resources.

Actually the source was not the Sixthaxis, it was only the source for my OP, and it can be found somewhere else on the net.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-drops-internal-natal-chip_1

We knew that at E3 last year. It is confirmed on stage at CES 2010 less than 24 hours ago, how Natal works. They tell you what the hardware does. Then they tell you what the software side does. It makes it possible to see the angles of joints and track body pathways. I posted the video in a thrad. People need to listen to what is said in that video. The hardware chip that does all the stuff that was said at E3 is still there. Unless it was taken out at CES after 630pm Jan 6th.

Some of you are making unassuming, innocuous comments.

Others are posting obnoxious nonsense. I can tell that several of you think software doesn't deserve your money. Please keep your petty high school anarchy stuff to yourself. The rest of us actually LIKE games.

Anyway, regardless of whether or not it is true, I'm sure Microsoft will have an excellent SDK ready for it that minimizes problems for developers. That's what they have been famous for this time around and I don't think that will change. They're going to squeeze as much out of this solution as they can and at the end of the day they'll undoubtedly get some insider kudos for it.