14 DAY TRIAL // Project Natal was the indisputable videogaming star of the recent Consumer Electronics Show 2010 in Las Vegas. Microsoft finally confirmed a holiday 2010 release window and offered a few more pieces of information on the device. And the big piece of news is that Project Natal will no longer have the dedicated chip initially included in order to handle the actual motion tracking.
That task will now by handled via software on the main Xbox 360 game console with Alex Kipman, the lead developer working on Natal, saying that about 10 to 15% of the CPU power will be used along with an extra 50 MB of RAM. It might not sound like too much but this could change the scope of the experiences Natal might handle.
When the add-on was first shown, games like Burnout were used for the demo, and we already know that Fable 3 will support it. Microsoft is still promising that the hardcore crowd, those who buy Gears of War, Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed, will pick it up and be satisfied with the experience it offers.
But as developers are looking to squeeze every drop of performance out of the Xbox 360, they might be reluctant to actually create videogames which reserved a piece, albeit a small one, of the computing power for the software section of Project Natal. Don't expect Gears of War 3 to allow you to control the weapons just by pulling fingers in the air and by getting into cover by ducking. The Epic team will likely use those 15% of power to get another few enemies in that wave coming after you or to make the opponents just a bit smarter.
So, Natal will probably only get videogames that are on line with what the Nintendo Wii is receiving at the moment, with some higher-end graphics thrown in. It might attract a part of those who currently game on the Nintendo platform and it will probably be more popular than the Sony wand. But it will not be for everyone and certainly not for shooter fans. It will solely serve to deepen the divide between the so-called hardcore and casual crowds of videogame players.