I have just caught the demo. It seems WELL cool if it works as featured in the promo.

Clicky

CC

It does look good, but I wonder how it will work in more normally lit rooms on a cold winter night.

I'd be very impressed if it could pick out the right person off the sofa though. A single person would be much easier

In related news, what do you think of Sony’s “glowing ball on a stick” effort? Better or worse?

^^^worse.

I like the idea of natal. I think putting it into a real-life situation would be far more difficult and may not even work as depicted in the video. Especially when the room isn't brightly lit. How many people play games in dark/darkened rooms?

I think the biggest thing is, whilst I might occasionally want a game where I can punch and kick like in real life, there are gonna be times (most of the time) where I just wanna cotch on the couch and play with a controller in my hand.

Er, Playstation Eye anyone!?

Sony's been pulling this trick for a while now.

So why are they trying to invent a crappier system?

I don't know, for the same reason Nintendo create inferior consoles and Microsoft waste billions on R&D that produces niente?

There are no Playstation Eye games that map your movement 1:1 onto a game character?

Playstation Eye had no idea of what you actually were. It used the defined change in colour combined with the movement to define a line or area that could be used as a paddle, button, etc...

If this works like it says it does then it would be equivalent to the glowing ping pong ball sticks demoed at E3.

It is a neat idea and has many applications outside the gaming arena.

I think the ideal solution is going to be somewhere between the Xbox and PS 3 efforts.

Some games need tactile feedback and more accuracy than the visual recognition alone can provide. If you are playing an FPS, how will it know exactly where the gun is pointing or when your trigger finger is resting or pulling the trigger.

Also, for driving games, an "air" wheel doesn't beat the a Logitech G25 with force feedback, feathering in the clutch etc...

Typical fanboy. Playstation Eye was a glorified webcam. Natal features full 3-d movement tracking and much more.

I'm not quite buying into the hype yet, but I am a little curious. I would imagine the games are going to be very specific to Natal i.e. the basic racing game they show you on the video rather than being able to use it in Forza 3.

It looks as though its attempting to capture a wider audience though with family participation games and such. And erm ...... girls trying on virtual dresses.

Isnt this 'inferior' console [wii] outselling PS3 and Xbox360?

IMO I think its unfair to call Nintendo consoles inferior. It's my take that they've not tried to create the most powerful/best graphics/all-in-wonder consoles. They focus on the novelty of gameplay, redefining controllers, etc. The Gamecube was a bit of a dog with the odd few exceptional games but I think the Wii was everything Nintendo would have wanted it to be.

Woah. I like the fighting game.

That'd come in really handy for building up confidence for upcoming competitions!

It is inferior, pull out some technical specs. and I'll blast it away. The Wii was great at launch, very novel. However, that novelty has gone and everyone I know bar-one is selling them in favour of a console with serious games that actually provide hours worth of entertainment, look good and often have replay value.

As for the Gamecube - I actually quite liked it, if only for Luigi's Mansion and Rogue Squadron.

To say it is inferior you have to define your measuring stick.

If your measuring stick is the highest number of FLOPS or FPS or pixels on screen then, yes, the Wii is inferior.

I very much doubt that that is what Nintendo were aiming for as if they were they could have done a whole lot better than the Wii.

I could say you are inferior to me. My measuring stick is the ability to develop Progress database software. Therefore I am superior.

The Wii was designed as a family entertainment system (heh, no reference intended but, FAMICOM anyone?). In that respect it is far superior to either the PS3 or the XBox 360.