"Freakin' awesome...except it kinda makes the Wii sort of useless, which makes me sad."

Nonsense. Nintendo has already issued a press release regarding their research with Natal-like interfaces (like many things that Sony and MS are trying to do, Nintendo has already tried it). Their verdict was that even the Wii remote without the MotionPlus attachment provided much more accurate motion response than a camera's "vision."

And Natal is nothing new, anyway. Anyone else remember the PS2 EyeToy? Most of the EyeToy games SUCKED, which everyone seems to be conveniently forgetting.

There's nothing to be sad about, except for MS, who refuse to learn from the mistakes of others, let alone their own mistakes.

I expect Natal to fail to meet everyone's expectations, especially MS's. It may be popular for a while, but it won't have the staying power that the Wii enjoys. Remember that the 360 has been on the market a year longer than both the Wii and PS3, yet the Wii has nearly outsold the 360 and the PS3 combined.

Looked like it worked pretty well to me. Also you're forgetting that the Eye Toy came out like 7 years ago. Technology always advances.

I don't think it will render the Wii useless...but since the only thing the Wii has going for it is its unique motion sensor and a handful of quality titles...this is going to hurt it.

You can't pretend like this is the PS Eye Toy, give me a break.

>> ^Jaace:
Looked like it worked pretty well to me. Also you're forgetting that the Eye Toy came out like 7 years ago. Technology always advances.
I don't think it will render the Wii useless...but since the only thing the Wii has going for it is its unique motion sensor and a handful of quality titles...this is going to hurt it.
You can't pretend like this is the PS Eye Toy, give me a break.


So what makes this so different? You're still using a camera for "vision"-based input, correct? Just because the processing power has increased doesn't mean you can do any more with the same kind of input.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Are you a Wii fanboy? Sorry if I offended you.

Plus Natal uses two cameras to capture your position in 3-D space. EyeToy, and Playstation Eye, obviously don't. The camera tech for these, obviously, has gotten way better in terms of resolution and frame rate as well, so comparing it to the original PS2 EyeToy is definitely a little disingenuous. And really all the Wii is is a couple of infrared cameras and some accelerometers, which also must be pretty low resolution given how jittery Wii seems to be. Anyway, personally I was more psyched about the Milo demo than this kind of thing, and also way more psyched about Sony's motion control demo using the PS Eye and the wands at a vastly higher resolution than the Wii provides. We'll see what happens next spring. Regardless, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I'm not interested in Nintendo's Vitality Sensor.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

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You'll notice how everyone is wearing orange jumpsuits?

That's not because they're fashionable, that's for sure. It's because the software isn't capable of "finding" person without help in the form of a huge orange marker. Granted it could be the studio lighting is too powerful... or it could be that the vision isn't particularly good at discerning background information from relevant player movements. I've dabbled with computer vision software - its not easy hacking by any means. Not impossible, that's for sure, but I doubt we'll see the huge strides still needed to complete whatever plans MS may have for Natal within a few months, that's for sure.

Everything about Natal screams "We're not nearly ready to sell this, but we'll keep pretending it's ready by showing people playing our tech demos." Just like the original 360 - it was rushed, and suffers a high rate of hardware failure for it (16%, or 4 out of every 25 360s sold, granted that number is prior to the Jasper revision, which supposedly has cut number down, but remember that across the entire consumer electronics industry, the hardware failure rate is 15%, and the Wii and PS3 fail at a rate of 3%).

I own a Wii, got it just a couple weeks after it launched, and I make no apology for enjoying it. I've been playing video games for over 25 years, and watched the industry evolve into what it is today. Microsoft is repeating the mistakes it's made since entering the console business, and I'm surprised they've lasted this long.

Besides, Nintendo has historic ties to the Yakuza. How cool is that?

I'm not just a Wii fanboy. I'm a I <3 The Big N Fanboy, diehard. I see my favorite game maker rise to power as it did in my childhood, and I laugh at the wannabe tech that Sony and MS have been scrambling to try and 1-up Nintendo, but they both fall short. Motion-control wasn't added to the PS3 control until late in it's development, after they saw what Nintendo was doing with the Wii remote, and they thought that they could just take that, just as they took their basic controller design from the SNES pad. The DS has outsold the PSP by over 2-to-1, and there hasn't been a time in the last 20 years when they didn't dominate the handheld market.

I own a Wii also, as well as a 360 and the older generation of consoles...I just don't play favorites I guess. I like what is good and fun. Shooting something down before you've even tried it seems narrow-minded to me.

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