Project Natal + Windows

I think part of the problem is that we are so used to controllers that it is hard for us to imagine playing any other way.  Using a controller seems "natural" when in fact it is anything but natural.

Personally I find it difficult to use a console controller to play FPS games. It feels like all my intended moves are funelled through a straw. A melee attack is reduced to a single button push. There are so many ways you can perform a melee attack, but all I get is to push a single button.  I used to play FPS games since before the original Doom even came out using a mouse and keyboard on a PC. To me that allows for much finer control. Mathematically, an analog stick results in the 1st derivative of where you are trying to aim, while a mouse is a 1:1 mapping of where you are trying to aim.  Even so, I have gotton somewhat used to using analog sticks to play FPS games.

I think if Natal proves to be accurate enough, and they can reduce the lag to such an extent that it becomes a non-issue (which I believe they can as this is still far from final shipping hardware), that there is nothing preventing game developers from creating a whole new FPS control mechanism based on body motion that could end up being much less restrictive that a controller. And unlike some people's idea that you will need to "walk/run in place" to simulate walking/running, it can be something much simpler like leaning in the direction you want to move. I already gave an idea of a motion-only, full control scheme for an FPS while comfortably sitting down on your couch.

The good news is that the developers are now getting the development kits. Let's hope they come up with some cool things that we just can't imagine right now since we are so brainwashed into thinking that these controllers are the "natural" or only way to do things.

BTW, they didn't "license", nor "buy" Natal.  They were working in-house on the software part of it for a very long time.  When it came close to having an actual product to demo and send out to developers, they needed to own the hardware as well. So they bought a company that developed a 3D camera and which also owned a lot of patents on it. Two birds with one stone.

As was said many times by those that know what they are talking about, both the hardware and software used in Natal is pretty cutting edge stuff.  To say that they didn't invent anything because they bought the hardware is pretty close-minded.

You may or may not have heard of Johnny Chung Lee:

"Speaking as someone who has been working in interface and sensing technology for nearly 10 years, this is an astonishing combination of hardware and software. The few times I’ve been able to show researchers the underlying components, their jaws drop with amazement... and with good reason.

But once you have the 3D information, you then have to interpret that cloud of points as "people". This is where the researcher jaws stay dropped. The human tracking algorithms that the teams have developed are well ahead of the state of the art in computer vision in this domain. The sophistication and performance of the algorithms rival or exceed anything that I've seen in academic research, never mind a consumer product."
http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2009/06/project-natal.html