Xbox 360 News and Tips

Xbox 360 Project Natal

Yesterday Microsoft demonstrated a prototype camera that can be used as a controller for the Xbox 360. In a project codenamed Project Natal, the camera eliminates the need for a handheld input device. The prototype camera can track a player's full body movement, recognize their face and voice, scan images of real items and respond to both physical and vocal commands.

It will be interesting to see if this is reality, or just hype. The new enhanced Wii controllers are coming out right now...could be Microsoft trying to steal a few headlines away from the Wii? I've seen these visual control schemes before, using a computer to do image processing in real time, but they have historically been unwieldy and sensitive to room lighting, what clothing the person is wearing, and so on. They also take a LOT of processor capacity...will this new device have it's own processor hardware to assist? If not, will the Xbox 360 have enough spare capacity to do this and play decent games?

There's a lot of questions, and I guess we won't know the reality of it all until the development kits get out and game companies actually start trying to develop titles that work with this new hardware device.