Xbox Natal – does it mean “not at all” real?

What seems like something that could be right out of every gamers fantasy, Microsoft has concocted the idea of hands free, body sensing gaming and put it to pixels on the project website. The videos portray several scenarios of advanced game play and interaction, and I’ll be the first to say that if they could do it well, I would be on it like a Frat boy on a Cheerleader – but as is usually the case with vaporware; it just winds up looking cooler than it ever is. Especially since it never emerges. I know, I’m a pragmatic type of guy – what can I say?

Given the relative ease at which I can fubar the connection of my Wii-motes, the idea of this working really well in a brightly sunlit room seems very far fetched. Since not all gamers (just the serious ones) live in their Mom’s basement, normal folk don’t always have the ideal setup for their consoles, so it would seem to me that this is an idea that is destined to be problematic at best.

Just the same, it looks super cool in fake-o-vision setup on the Natal project site, and is exciting to think that I could roundhouse my own way through Street Fighter 87. Take a look though, it would be super freakin’ awesome. You can also file this under “man I really want to go to E3!”

1 thought on “Xbox Natal – does it mean “not at all” real?”

  1. A development nightmare. I doub they will have this thing up and running by 2010. Unless they have been working on it for at least 3 years already. And the fact that the “demo” was totally fake (i am guessing here, but is a damn good guess) Really speaks ill of it. if it was already a workable system they would have shown some REAL futage.

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