Hype on Project Natal?

Xbox team has some new development where there’s no strings attached. Basically, it’s your typical webcam game on steroids where the system determines where the user is and sets them “within” the game. Virtual reality, anyone? Very similar except you would be watching yourself on the screen doing certain things.

Now in this sense, Project Natal is taking on the Wii in the next evolution of gaming. But there are still many questions to be answered before this could go mainstream. Here’s some of the reasoning. First, to identification of a body in human form isn’t as bad anymore as it used to be, but does this new development take into account “bigger” individuals? Perhaps short, tall, those with big hands, little feet, or what not. The reason for a controller is mainly because the processing power isn’t taken up by translation of movements. With the Wii, there isn’t a need to identify where the body is because of the relationship with the controller to the Wii Bar. But here, the cam has to send the movements in relation to a 3D field and be translated on the fly by the 360.

I’m not saying that it’s not possible, since Playstation Eye has had similar games for a while. Project Natal just has more hype and a bit fancier gaming and taking the leap of faith that this is the next step beyond Wii’s enormous success with interactive gaming. But will it truly live up to Microsoft’s E3 hype? Can it actually take into account different individuals body types along with accents in voice recognition? I have been following speech recognition development for the past decade and IBM has been one of the leaders in this technology. Even at the present state, it’s still not entirely fabulous although it’s better than my college days.

Either way, I’m truly hoping that Microsoft can make good on their Natal versus their marketing team’s push for it. If not, then it’ll put a kink in the Xbox team’s armor and reinforce Nintendo’s claim-to-fame in interactive gaming.