Thursday, Jun. 04, 2009
Project Natal
Rumors of a Microsoft motion-sensing controller have been around ever since Nintendo's Wii started cleaning Xbox's clock in 2006, but few expected the surprise twist: Microsoft's Wii-killer has no controller at all. Project Natal, a 3-D camera system that tracks a player's body movement, requires no input from a handheld device. Perhaps even more shocking for the understandably incredulous crowd — the debut trailer seemed like something out of a science-fiction movie — are initial reports that it might actually sort of work. It remains to be seen what percentage of the seemingly impossible tasks previewed in the trailer will make it into the final product, but Microsoft can't be faulted for shooting for the moon.