Home   >   Das Latest and Greatest   >   Microsoft’s Project Natal: Making Waves at CES

Microsoft’s Project Natal: Making Waves at CES

By on January 8, 2010

Microsoft Project Natal product picture

Hey gamers! Got some CES 2010 news there for you about the much talked about Project Natal!

Motion Sensor technology.  You’re hearing about it everywhere.  Ever since the moment Nintendo revealed the Wii back in 2006, the gaming world has been abuzz with motion sensing technology.  Everyone’s trying to cash in on it, yet few seem to take it seriously.  The team of Microsoft’s Project Natal, however, does not take it lightly.  Project Natal is 100% for sure serious venture into expanding the way gamers interact with the games they play.

Most of you know the basic gist of the Natal.  It’s basically a peripheral with a camera that can capture the body positions of people in front of the lens, and interpret those positions and movements within the game world!  Exciting, no?

The specs Microsoft has released at CES 2010 already sound promising.

Natal’s lead developer Alex Kipman says that the Natal can recognize the body shape of a new user in 160 milliseconds.  It captures information at 30 frames per second. It can recognize a user body posture or pose in only 10 milliseconds.  It can recognize 31 different body parts at a time, and will know if you’ve placed your hand behind your back.  Impressive, little camera.  Impressive.

But you are not market-ready yet.

While back at E3, Microsoft announced that the Natal peripheral will contain its own processor, it seems that spec has changed.  Now, the developers are saying that Natal will occupy 10-15% of the Xbox360’s processing power, which is raising some eyebrows in the gaming community.  Some are concerned that 10-15% will prevent the peripheral from being a viable control option for the highest-end games.  I don’t know about you, but it would be pretty bad ass to play COD 7 or whatever using your body as the controller, a la Gamer (the King Leonidas…er, Gerard Butler movie).

We’ve learned at CES that Project Natal definitely works, just as we thought it would.  What we’re wondering still, however, is how well it will work.  And are the devs willing to jump into developing for it?  I guess we’ll find out come the 2010 holiday season, Natal’s projected release date.

About David Scarpitta

I am a critical guy, and love to review and give my professional opinion on just about anything. Though have a love for tech/gaming and music alongside the cinema. You can catch me consulting and developing the net any day of the week.