Project Natal

I hate to be the cynic, but after seeing the video for Microsoft’s new camera input device I can’t help but think, “yeah right.” I can’t imagine the technology required for that to work even reasonably well isn’t something that exists right now. If it does, it sure as hell isn’t cheap enough to mass produce for a game console. Maybe I’m wrong and Microsoft has some crazy new tech that makes it all work wonderfully, but I’m not holding my breath. Remember when Sony announced something similar this time last year? Funny thing, the virtual pet hasn’t been mentioned since. I’m sure it is still being worked on in some capacity. We’ll see what ends up happening with that I suppose.

Another reason I’m finding it hard not to be cynical is the biggest Project Natal announcement so far is from Lionhead. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Fable 1 and thought Fable 2 was pretty good too, but you can’t deny Peter Molyneux’s tendency to overhype his games. He seemed like he was getting better with Fable 2, but then he ended up going off about some new experiment of theirs that will blow the collective minds of gamers everywhere. He couldn’t mention anything about it other than how awesome it is. I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be Milo.

My other problem is, if it does work, will the games be as lame as the ones in the video looked? the racing one looked okay, but changing tires as a pit crewman is not exactly my idea of a great time. Hopefully once the technology is readily available, excellent uses of it will start popping up. Then again, I still haven't seen this fully realized with the Wii and that's been out for almost four years.

One thing that gives me hope is Johnny Lee’s recent blog post explaining how excellent the tech is. He kind of comes off as a PR robot in his post, but I’ve seen his videos and several of them show things I wouldn’t have thought possible.

I hope everything they claim comes to be and then a whole lot more, but like I said, I’m not holding my breath.