Project Natal

I'd love to try it out, imo it was the best part of the show, the rest didn't really interest me. As for release date, I'm guessing sometime next summer? Though I have a feeling that it's going to have a shitload of issues and shovelware. I hope I'm wrong though, because it seems to be quite an impressive piece of tech.

Everyone has posted this in the Microsoft which is stickied at the top of the forums. All further discussion should remain in there.

Looks awesome.  However, I don't see myself playing games using my body O_o;  I prefer a controller.

My take: Great for Eyetoy-like titles. Great for Wii Fit-like titles, great for some various fighting games, boxing, etc.

BUT: Not great for actual games, I think Nintendo has the right idea with actual controller and buttons for that.

Example: Take a FPS. We all know how those work on the Wii. How would they work on Natal? How can it know where you want to look, where you want to shoot, where you want to move, what weapon you want to switch to, when to use grenade, what type of grenade to use, when to crouch, when to SPRINT, and all sorts of other actions a particular game may have like different vision modes, jumping, climbing, all at nearly the same time? It's simple, it CAN'T. So, you'll still have to use your 360 controller for actual games, and at most you get some headtracking and some leaning motions on top, while stil aiming with plain on analog sticks. That's not that different to what The SIxAxis + EyeToy can in theory do, and it's a far cry from the controls a corrsponding Wii game can have.

Given that, it's surprising how many 360 fanboys are drooling over it considering the main application for it is the waggle fests they hate so much on the Wii and it's counter-intuitive for actual games. I guess it might be cool for a rail/lightgun shooter where you actually step from cover to cover but yeah, not much else can be done when it comes to proper games.

So, I think this can (but may not) be a SERIOUS injury for Nintendo in terms of the extremely casual users. Not in the Mario sense but in the Wii Fit sense. Not so much for the actual games. Of course, it depends on the price too. That's my 2 eurocents.

It would be great if I believed they actually could build AI intelligent enough, voice recognition and face recognition well enough to support a drama game.  If you could play out scenes from a movie, tell a character to fuck off, or just sneer at someone and they'd get frightened, that would be awesome.  I REALLY doubt our technology is there or will be for another 30 years or more.  That's why it'll suck.

You'll have stuff like Seaman, crappy Wii-like games, and Eyetoy shit.  I'd love to be proven wrong, but I don't see how it's technically possible.

I know that most of us where thining eyetoy ripoff but when Peter took stage and showed Milo... well it showed there is a lot more depth to this device than what I thought could be possible.

Looks really cool, the motion capture looked to be a lot more smooth and fluid than what has existed previously, also the fact that they aren't using a peripheral is good, I don't much enjoy having to use the wii remotes for motion stuff.

Actually now that I think about it, I like it more. Nintendo is all about giving us 300 different peripherals to buy and add on, so its great that microsoft is going in the other direction, although technically speaking.. your still buying the vision capture device thing.

I'm interested to hear the testimonials for that kid Milo, since it was Molyneux, and we all know how he likes to exadgerate and stretch the truth a bit. There is no doubt that the video was in some way scripted and thus.. not done live, so it will be cool to hear what people who get to test it out say, hopefully Jeff can get in there and cause some trouble "Ok, now take these scissors and run with them"

I really wanna see more of the earlyer Natal stuff they showed, where those two girls were talking about that fake party they werent going to, but she was able to pick the dress and properly overlay it so she could see herself wearing it on the TV, that is crazy!

That Lionhead thing looked amazing. If it actually works as well when the demo it for press, that's astounding. A lot of people wrote it off, but the artificial intelligence running behind that thing must be beastly.

first impressions are

What sold me on it was the concept, the whole presentation was just cliche

I'm going to quote myself from the MS Conference thread.

The posibilities are huge just like the wii was when it was announced, how this progresses though will be very interesting indeed.

It looks promising. I want to see how it will do in the future.

With FPS it feels more natural to actually pull a trigger or button. The whole facial and voice recignition seemed pretty cool to me, but how it handles accents will also be interesting.

The idea of scaning thing in and it being visulised within the game looked cool too

I thought it was really cool, but I think the conversations were probably scripted. 

This really makes me curious about the next wave of consoles. I assume the next xbox would come with this out of the box. It makes me wonder where Nintendo will go with their motion control next gen. I know that's probably a long ways off, but still.

This will be the longest generation of consoles.

The AI in Milo will never work that well. I mean half way though the demo video it even stopped being reactive dialog. It will just be a dialog tree again I am guessing.

It sounds retarded

100% not interested.  Especially at the rumored price point.

It looks like far too much effort.

I believe Natal will fail horribly. Even in controlled environment, it was showcased with faulty realtime and obvious target render. Like anything Molyneux has done, Milo will probably have just about as many functions as we are shown in the thousand previews - And after two hours in which we tried every one of them, it will become completely uninteresting. Remember Black&White? Yeah.
In the real world, people will have motion behind them. In the real world, people will not be sitting away far enough for the camera to pick everything up correctly. In the real world, workable voice recognition is frustrating 80% of the time. In the real world, nobody wants to play games that way. I like that I can play Force Unleashed on the Wii with all the gesture-based goodness (and the motion control on Force Unleashed is really great) sitting down and resting my arms on my lap.

Maybe I'm just outdated and wrong about the current technology, but I can see Natal working the way it should to be successful just about as much as OnLive.

My question is how will they make it into a game. I have no interest in chatting with Milo.

Here's how I think this would actually work with a FPS:

HOW YOU'LL USE A GUN:
Hold your hand like a gun and then, to fire, lower your thumb down to touch the knuckle of your middle finger. Camera should pick that up

HOW YOU'LL WALK/RUN:
Imagine a square on the floor and you're standing in the middle of it. Move forward in the square to walk forward (backward to move backward, etc..). To sprint, move to the far edge of the square and do high-knees.

HOW YOU'LL SPIN AROUND:
Drag your foot along the floor to "spin" the scenery. Drag your right foot back to turn left or forward to turn right. Kick hard and keep your foot off the floor to do a pirouette.

Seems like a really cool piece of technology. I can't see myself using it, however.

Not so much... the trick of technology is to appear absent.

I just want to shout at it to pause stuff. That's it.

All you need to know about project Natal is to play Totemball.  It is a free game that can only be played with the xbox camara.  I think most of the things that will come out of project Natal will play as poorly as that game.  Try to finish it, I dare you.