Exactly. I'm most excited about the possibilities Natal introduces with its voice and facial recognition. Swapping out which profile is logged in based on who is standing/sitting in front of the camera could be awesome.
Never going to happen. MSoft desires their profile swapping system to be as complex and as infuriating as possible. There's no other explanation for their shit.
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Plus, possibly being able to have an intuitive conversation with an NPC in-game, where they react convincingly to not only what you say, but your facial expressions as well, could lead to a whole new level of immersion.
Jesus please NO. This will certainly lead to instances like this:
NPC: You look disappointed...
ME: Stares at screen
NPC: You look disappointed...
ME: Glares at screen
NPC: You look disappointed...
ME: Angrily forces a smile
NPC: Good! I'm glad you are pleased with our transaction. Let us talk of other matters...
I think gamers need to get over the "games need a controller" crap.
When game input devices change, games change. Yes it's true you likely will not be playing the Halo FPS game you've been playing for hte past 10 years in the next 5 years, but from where I stand that's a good thing.
Just like keyboard based adventure games died out when controllers became popular, so too will controller based games die out when new interfaces are created.
I don't know if younger gamers even realize how much gaming changed into something entirely different just to oblige gamepads. I, and I think a lot of other old school PC players, are ready for it to change again and maybe reclaim some of what was lost.
This item was the second-most voted on by users (6300+ votes), and Natal got an average rating of a whopping 54/100 on a scale of 1 (not important at all) to 100 (very important).
Interesting. If you remember, skepticism of the Wii-mote and the Wii itself was remarkably high before it's release, but non-gamers became extremely excited about it based on the new gimmick.
Exactly, from waggle to flailing! I'm going to be pissed if all of the people on this site who trounced the Wii for it's implementation of waggle end up buying into this arm-flailing toy and talk it up as if it's the next kewl.
NATAL also recognizes faces, has voice input, and camera input for doing things like drawing a fish for Milo or displaying your reflection in a pool of water.
The amount of input that it gives to designers is MUCH greater than what designers get with the Wii-mote and that's pretty cool.
Will some games be as shallow and one-note as Wii party games (but still quite fun in party instances)? Absolutely. However, the ability to use these inputs will be out there ready to be used by game designers who will come up with fun and interesting ways to make it enhance gameplay.
The thing about motion-control, and spatial inputs in general, is that the increased input options actually can become barriers to creating a good game if you don't come up with a scheme to manage them.
The Wii made this worse by an incomplete motion control system that was only rectified by the 1:1 Motion+.
So, the same factor that makes new game types possible can potentially drown developers in difficulty. What's needed are perhaps some middleware developers to step into the gap and provide various schemes of spatial control, from zone-based inputs, to mudra-inputs, to wand-style inputs ala Wiimote, etc.
Another problem is generalizing down to typical usage patterns. MS seems to assume everyone's going to use Natal in their living room. By assuming that they may create games which only work properly in a living room where you can stand, and move back far enough that your feet are visible, etc.
