Greenberg: 'millions of Natals in consumer's homes this holiday'

So, actual people have tried Natal already, right?

Just finished listening to the podcast and Chris had a good point. With natal taking up up to 15% processing power sure natal may be great for natal games, but for future games it could make it more of a hassle for developers to put into the game.

I expect some early hype, small sects of excitement, and a dozen or so games in the first three months, all of which are glorified tech demos. After that, the motion control hype will quietly fade, just like the Eyetoy.

Take it to the bank.

that is absolutely one of the cheesiest and most awkward videos ever. i feel so icky when i watch it. it makes me uncomfortable.

Depending on price ranges, it might be fairer to compare it to Wii Play, rather than Wii Fit. But we shall see..

It's just that I'll never get to use it with every Xbox going RROD.

Personally, I feel like if they do a hardware redesign this year, maybe just something to decrease size, weight, and production cost like the PS3 Slim (and maybe help with the hardware failure issues), or something something with a few extra features, that will get a lot of momentum moving in their direction.

They could piggy back the Natal camera onto the hype of the redesign by packing it in with the mid and high end SKUs, which are currently the $300 120GB Elite and $400 250GB Elite. A price drop would be nice too, but if you bundle the camera in with the system, you'll do a LOT to help its viability as a platform.

The camera adds a good amount of value into the SKUs, so the price drop may not be necessary. Maybe giving the low end Arcade model some internal flash memory that's still cheaper then the cost of a HDD or giving the mid and high end SKUs some internal Wi-Fi would be nice as well, but getting that camera in there is a must. Sell it separately for $50 or $60 too and call it a day.

I don't see how the average FPS gaming "fatso" is going to want to wave his arms around on his xbox 360. And, let's be honest, they make up the majority of the xbox fanbase. I doubt they're going to make a gun motion with their hands and go "pew pew pew" to shoot their enemy, or try to emulate Ryu's dragon punch.

motion controls work well for Nintendo because they dropped their "hardcore" image over 10 years ago. Heck, even during the SNES days, it was Sega that was considered more mature.

If natal is going to suceed, microsoft is going to have to make a clear divide between Natal and the conventional 360. If games are going to have both types of controls, the more serious game developers are going to go elsewhere.

Here's some details on how Natal works:
http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2010-01/exclusive-inside-microsofts-project-natal

I'm gonna pre-ordr Natal as soon as I can. I have a feeling my mind will explode, but in a good way.

first day buy for me ,no matter the # of games releasesd same week or month.cause it looks to be something different & worth trying.

I hear ya'.

And, yeah - not sure about Natal yet either. I figure if it gives me Minority Report sans Tomboy Cruise girl, I'll dig it.

Roll on E3! Microsoft have stated that they're monitoring the games being worked on for Natal and that NO shovelware is allowed. It'll simply be rejected.

Natal isn't the name it will shipped as either.

A year of hype? the only people that have heard about are the hardcore gamers that read about games on websites, and I'd say most of us are not interested.

and again for the life of me, I don't see how this is different from the eyetoy, which is ignored by consumers and developers.

Of course it will reach 1 million. Heck, it will probably reach 10 million. I mean, EyeToy sold like 5 million...

As for Natal games, I don't think that their quality will be that superior to the EyeToy games'... Probably the same games: wash windows, hit balls, ect...

As long as Natal includes a Steve Ballmer Monkeydance simulator, I'll be happy.

"Give it up for me! YEEEEEARRRRRRGGH!!"

It's the "Sweatin' to the Ballmer" fitness program.

Wii Fit, pfft.

@ Bradwart The Echidna

I know the flip top would be cheaper, but it'd look ugly as hell. You could get away with that on the PS2 Slim, cause the unit was so damn small and you needed to, but there's no way the 360 will even come close to that. Ditch the disc tray, make it slot loading, call it a day.

There is kind of a rather significant problem with a redesign though: what are they doing with the hard drive. If they keep the detachable drives they have on the current models, they're restricted in some of their dimension choices.

As for the price drop, like I said, you can take it or leave it. If you pack in built in Wi-Fi and the camera into the Elite models on a redesign, there's no reason to drop the price. Maybe the Arcade could see a drop between the $150 and $200 price range.

I got just one question for this Greenberg character:

"Christmas, mo*fo*! Can you say it?"

And for the Joystiq editors. If 'this holiday' is not referring to MLK, then is must mean 'holiday' in the we-don't-want-to-say-Christmas-sense, and that means it is a proper noun, and should be capitalized. 'this Holiday.'

Ok here's a thought. How many copies did Fable 2 sell? 2 million? 3 million? 4 million? How many of those were LE copies?

And do Microsoft expect Fable 3 to sell more than Fable 2?

I think If NATAL is bundled with all new 360s sold after October '10, as well as being bundled with the LE version of Fable 3 (assuming a pre-xmas launch) we could quite easily be looking at an install userbase in excess of a million by Jan '11. And that's not even including the stand-alone NATAL sales, which, even if it bombs, you could reasonably expect to be a quarter of a million global.

Their aim seems to be to get this out to as many users as possible (hence they dropped the dedicated processor - too expensive). so my guess is a pricepoint equivalent to a full price game, say $40.00 on its own or bundled with 12 month's xbox live for $60.00.

With the above strategy Mr. Greenburg's confidence might not be so unfounded.

Natal is nothing more than a SONY Eyetoy clone

Natal = Nothing AT ALL

The issue is going to be cost. A camera system of the complexity to fulfill the hype of Natal would cost more than the 360 itself. Microsoft needs this to be a $100 add on to have any success but Microsoft charges $100 for a $15 piece of networking equipment. Charging $100 for Natal would fly in the face of Microsoft's entire peripheral pricing strategy. I mean people are going to wonder why a controller charger nearly costs as much as a full body tracking camera system.

From the recent tech data the system is going to use a single infrared camera and a single black and white camera for motion tracking. You can forget about seeing yourself in games or video chat unless another webcam is added to the package. That also means the whole scanning in your objects thing is gone. Adding a third camera will increase costs.

Also gone is any hope of tracking fine movements. Natal has 16 points of motion tracking as shown in the Popular Science article. Head, neck, shoulders, elbows, hands, torso, hips, knees, feet. No fingers, no eye tracking. Gone is also any time of flight principal for motion tracking. Natal works by guessing your movements based on a 50mb chunk of data sourced from a massive image database. The chunk of data is made up from 16 point motion tracking skeletons mapped to a canned moveset. If you start to move your arm down Natal guesses the rest of the movement and process the action. The hope is that the database has enough images to know the difference between a pitching motion and a punch. You will have to move in the way natal wants you to move in order for the controls to respond properly.

It really isn't motion tracking but motion guesstimation. The more information that comes out explains the limitations of the system and the terribly executed demonstrations. Any movement outside of the programmed set causes problems. It also explains the white backgrounds and unnatural poses used in the demonstrations. The 10-15% processing power is also used to capture and process the movements of a single person. The system will be incapable of capturing multiple people simultaneously as promised unless the processing hit moves up substantially. The use of props will also cause a lot of problems. Holding a WiiRacket type peripheral will throw off the body tracking points unless the system is programmed for that variable. The racket will just make it look like you have one arm that is longer than the other. The actions with the adjusted capture points will not match the moves in the database and the system will not register the action.

The lack of true hard data will also cause many problems. Without accelerometers and gyroscopes there will be no true physics calculations that can be used for on screen motion. Triangulation from point a to point b will be the only way to measure speed and it will not be able to sense any type of twisting. Good luck throwing a curveball instead of a fastball.

While more advanced than the Eyetoy the system is still far from a true motion capture system. The eyetoy was based on a hitbox system generated from the captured image. You became the character in the game and the simple programming reacted to anything that hit the outline of your character. Natal uses your motions to control the in game character. In order for your motion to appear in the game it must be programmed. The system will not allow for a baseball game where you can control every aspect of your swing. You will swing and the in game character will swing but only in a position that has been pre-programmed. Natal is exactly like the mocap boxing game in arcades. A cool concept when you see it but the novelty quickly wears off as you realize that the game isn't any good because of the limitations of the system.

Simple.The hardcore crowd isn't impressed by a game that makes you move around. If we wanted to move around we wouldn't be playing video games in the first place. That said I'm intrigued to see what MS comes up with. This device has a lot more potential than the Eye Toy ever did.