Well, my title pretty much set up my mindset, so i'll just spit it.  
 
I was playing a little 1 vs. 100 on XBL tonight, and it kind of set off a crazy glimpse into the future for me. In my personal opinion, the whole format for 1 vs. 100 is what we're starting to see and will be seeing a lot more of, especially when Natal is released. I foresee shiny, wii-like graphics on interfaces and avatars doing strange things with no regard to their personal image on many more applications soon to come. If you haven't seen 1 vs. 100, I advise to take a look, so we're all on the same page here. I don't know about you, but I didn't buy a 360 for it to gradually become a Wii. Admittedly, the motion-controller for 360 looks a lot better and more refined, but that's only because they don't want to copy the Wii exactly, isn't it?  
 
I'm not trying to diss any Natal developers, and i'm sure they've put in a lot of effort. All i'm talking about are the core elements here. In any case, I didn't mean for this to be another post about Natal, but actually about the shiny, avatar-toting graphics of what seems to be what XBL is moving towards. I just kind of find the whole thing irrelevant to the gaming experience I was hoping to buy into.  
 
Anywho, am I missing something, or is it just that Microsoft wants us to be sucked into the whole avatar-fueled, community-interacted, shiny-graphic-ed idea? That sentence didn't really turn into what I wanted, but that's basically what i'm trying to get across.

Well, my title pretty much set up my mindset, so i'll just spit it.  
 
I was playing a little 1 vs. 100 on XBL tonight, and it kind of set off a crazy glimpse into the future for me. In my personal opinion, the whole format for 1 vs. 100 is what we're starting to see and will be seeing a lot more of, especially when Natal is released. I foresee shiny, wii-like graphics on interfaces and avatars doing strange things with no regard to their personal image on many more applications soon to come. If you haven't seen 1 vs. 100, I advise to take a look, so we're all on the same page here. I don't know about you, but I didn't buy a 360 for it to gradually become a Wii. Admittedly, the motion-controller for 360 looks a lot better and more refined, but that's only because they don't want to copy the Wii exactly, isn't it?  
 
I'm not trying to diss any Natal developers, and i'm sure they've put in a lot of effort. All i'm talking about are the core elements here. In any case, I didn't mean for this to be another post about Natal, but actually about the shiny, avatar-toting graphics of what seems to be what XBL is moving towards. I just kind of find the whole thing irrelevant to the gaming experience I was hoping to buy into.  
 
Anywho, am I missing something, or is it just that Microsoft wants us to be sucked into the whole avatar-fueled, community-interacted, shiny-graphic-ed idea? That sentence didn't really turn into what I wanted, but that's basically what i'm trying to get across.

It seems like Xbox is becoming more Wii like, and the PlayStation is becoming more like the Xbox 360 was right at launch. However, what really matters to me is the games, and not the interface surrounding them. So I don't really care how much they do with avatars, motion controls, social networking... It's the games that I'll base my console decision making on.

Well, it's a good thing that the 360 is still going to be a 360 at heart.  I don't think game developers are going to use Natal that much, because I'd bet that it is going to be particularly difficult to develop for.  So, let XBL become that, but the real games (you know, those things that actually determine the long-term success of a console) aren't going to change too much.

This is what I want from Natal...well imagine a game say Assassins Creed 2/ Oblivion etc and all of the people in the game you can actually speak to (speak into the mic on Natal) and they will recognize what your saying in a really really intelligent way and react to you. 
So no speech choices from a list, they react to what you say. 
 
Edit: But for this to work, our AI needs to be way smarter. But hey maybe in 10 years.

If Microsoft can balance everything, I'm all for it. I really like where they're at right now.

Well I don't mind all this avatar stuff, really, but this is all effort that could be spent on something I would actually want. Like ironing out their crappy customer service for one thing... 
 
But until then i'll be happy with "Avatar Marketplace"

" This is what I want from Natal...well imagine a game say Assassins Creed 2/ Oblivion etc and all of the people in the game you can actually speak to (speak into the mic on Natal) and they will recognize what your saying in a really really intelligent way and react to you. So no speech choices from a list, they react to what you say.  Edit: But for this to work, our AI needs to be way smarter. But hey maybe in 10 years. "