Project Natal Launch Confirmed for October by Microsoft Executive

It's not too often that we hear videogaming news coming from the Middle East, one of the emerging markets for the industry. But one Microsoft executive hailing for Saudi Arabia has pretty much confirmed that the Project Natal motion tracking system for the Xbox 360 home console will be launched world wide during the month of October.

Talking on Saudi television, Syed Bilal Tariq, who is a marketing manager at the Saudi offices of Microsoft, said “I do have great news to share with everybody that Project Natal will be launched in Saudi Arabia and in the world somewhere in October. We will be in a position to confirm the date after E3, which is in June. But definitely, it is going to be October 2010.”

It's not clear whether the Saudi Microsoft executive offered the information because his company is ready to talk publicly about it or whether it was a slip of the tongue and the company will chalk up everything he said as merely speculation.

It's not the first time we hear about a possible launch date of October for Project Natal. Television personality Jonathan Ross got a demo with the system and said that it would be coming to the public in October and retail listings from Amazon showed that a yoga-themed game for Natal should be launched in the same month.

Project Natal is set to allow players to control their games only through the movement of their bodies, without the use of any controller. The software giant has shown some demos of videogames using it but a lot of people are not convinced that the system is suited for fast paced titles like first person shooters. Project Natal will compete for market share with Sony's PlayStation Move, also set to arrive during the fall. More information on both systems will be coming at Microsoft and Sony’s E3 presentations.