I'd bet with a very few exceptions, old games aren't going to be patched to work with a Natal control scheme. Too much cost, no real profit. Besides, why patch old games when there are new games people will actually pay for?

Software will decide whether this is a success. As has been mentioned before, Ubisoft has 10 titles in the works for Natal, so this isn't an MS-only push.

I'd also be curious what kind of support for Natal will occur in the XBLA space...

Natal games aren't *necessarily* going to be core gamer experiences, so the lack of a CPU on the Natal device shouldn't cause too much hardship. I'd bet that most non-Gears/Halo/COD games do not use all of the CPU cores - Star Wars Lego/Kung-fu Panda type games are the level I'd target for Natal games, which are intended to appeal to casuals anyway. I'd bet those types of games wouldn't have a problem even if an entire single core was devoted to Natal processing.

We'll see closer to E3 2010 what MS has up their sleeve.

There's a popular belief (born probably to make malevolent people eat crow) that dreaming the death of somebody lenghten instead his life, so Ballmer should gloat for all this actual widespread love for MS!   

So, by all means, join the hatefest, if you love it!!!   

I think it will fail. Not that it will be bad, I just think it is to late for it. This will not even phase the Wii. All of the "casual" gamers are jumping onto the Wii"s bandwagon. I truly hope it succeeds though because if it does it will be the final thing pushing me off of the fence and forcing me to buy a 360.

I honestly don't think that Microsoft has what it takes to create expanded audience software. They have released nothing so far that would make me thing they can.

But project Natal losing a chip to be cheaper seems it would be a boon for making adoption better.

I'd add two things:

Against Natal, MS making it too much closed would restrict its use to 1st party and 3rd party exclusives, narrowing its scope.

In favour of Natal, as it uses a lot of 3rd party techs not owned but just licensed by MS, competitors could develop analogous solutions, making easier and economically sound the development of multiplatform development tools (and their use by games developers), this could mean success for Natal, despite not making it by any means a weapon against the competition.

They should.

Depends on how you qualify it, if you mean as a huge seller depends on pricing. I'd say probably yes if you consider interface and the PC as part of it.

In terms of creating game software that's appealing to a wider demographic... maybe. I think it's probably going to be both easier and harder to do than they are expecting. Easier in the sense that it requires less resources, and harder in the sense that they haven't really made a lot of these games recently very well.

The removal of the chip part is both a positive and a negative. It's positive because it drops cost, and negative because you then can't make it as compatible as before with games that were being developed. I'd say it tends to create a bigger split between casual and hardcore audiences, which may or may not be a problem.

But as with anything we know so little about and has been so controlled in terms of impressions and preview info, it's quite up in the air and nothing is set in stone.

The bigger question is whether or not the software will be there. If M$ convince me that my experiences in Fable III and GeoW 3 will be better, then I will buy one

Well, they pulled off the xbox and 360. Who knows how popular it will be, but it's getting massive media coverage and brilliant advertising is one of MS' strongpoints.

"Natal consumes between 10 to 15 per cent of the Xbox's computing power." I really don't think this post is fair, not only inaccurate. MS has several options and so far they have made great decision with their business models and have catered very well to such a wide audience, when they add a new audience, existing audiences have never been affected. They have so far done a great job and given back so much for all their targeted audiences. When they were focusing on casual gamers, MS has never let down the rest of the Audience. MS has such a powerful and groundbreaking GPU & CPU, maybe not on paper. But in reality they are delivering stunning graphics. Alan Wake will blow Uncharted 2 away.

10-15% CPU usage will not even have any dent in the console performance. MS had a choice in keeping the onboard NATAL chip which handles all the CPU power, but they dropped it, because it was not necessary they would rather keep costs down. They have only cut corners the once with the launch of the first Xbox 360s but they have learnt their lesson, so if they dropped the NATAL chip, they did it for a greater reason, and not cutting corners. Most games do not use the complete power of the Xbox, so there is much more to offer on it as MS creates better software technology for developers to utilize the CPU & GPU better, optimization of the system via further software updates. Since MS are world's best software developers, I think its safe to say they know what they are doing?

MS are not like Sony they are clever, they have a solid business model, probably the best in this generation, especially with the capabilities of Xbox Live. They know that hardcore gamers provide the best revenue, so why on Earth would there be any doubt with what MS are planning for this year. I think after all MS have achieved I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt, wouldn't you agree?