That's not necessarily true.  A chip dedicated to processing the information that the camera captures could very well be better than using 15-30% of the XBox360 CPU power.  The chip would be designed for whatever needs to happen to process the data.  CPUs are generally good at everything and are designed to be useful in almost any circumstance.  A custom designed chip would probably be crap at doing most things, but excel at what it's supposed to do (process Natal data).

An easy example is having a GPU with an h.264 decoder vs one without.  If your GPU has an h.264 decoder, your CPU utilization when watching an HD video will probably be relatively light, even for weaker CPUs.  If your GPU doesn't have an h.264 decoder, well I hope you have a powerful CPU.  The NVIDIA Tegra can do 1080p h.264 decoding that an older desktop CPU would have a tough time with, but in terms of pure power, the older desktop CPU is probably more powerful than the Tegra.

EDIT:  On a side note, it was the cheaper, less powerful GPUs from NVIDIA that were the first to include an H.264 decoder while the more powerful GPUs went without one.

Correct.  But I doubt they were developing a custom chip that was processing a neural network.  A custom chip for convolutions and other such image processing would be faster than the 360 CPU and cheaper, but I am sure the tasks necessary for Natal would require either an incredibly expensive custom chip, or a cheaper slower general processor.

What a nonsense post & statement. They are bold words coming from a Developer who seems to barely had a real go with it and the final version at that, its supposed to be a preview, not a review. Its funny how he praises the Arc, its almost like a subliminal comparison of the two. Natal has yet to be finalised and will not until this fall. So what's with the "lag" talk? If it's so laggy do you think all those BIG "REAL" Developers would even bother, and put their integrity and neck on the line to praise NATAL as the next big thing PUBLICLY?! It doesn't seem to make any sense to me. I would bet my life on it that Natal will work in conjunction with a controller and any future peripheral that it may release without lag. Even alone it has unlimited potential to not only create new genres but take current genres to new heights! It has the perks of both worlds and has unlimited implementations. All the major developers seem to agree and all the press along with it. So it seems kinda dodgy that "Traveller’s Tales’ director Jon Burton" seems to think so quick that lag will be an ongoing issue from a preview of it, a bit unfair don't you think? In addition, seems to have nothing sceptical to say about the Arc. I wonder why.....?

so waving my arms infront of a camera with no controller talking to a 12 year old boy or waving a black dildo is hardcore?

I think waving a dildo sounds kind of hardcore

^^Depends on what you are talking to the boy about.

I believe 100 ms refers to the lag Natal introduces, not the total lag from input to game code to rendering.

Either way, it is going to be improving from the videos we have already seen.

I was thinking about that actually... did anyone measure the lag on those videos? It's probably easy to do by playing frame by frame.

Digital Foundry did.  They are the ones that actually said it was similar to Killzone 2.

its kinda what everybody thinks about natal.

they have to fix that, and find it killer app.