Digital Foundry vs. Project Natal

One thing I think is worth pointing out is that Natal only seems to scan up to the hand, which is just one of the 48 tracked points. I was curious as to whether the tech could lock onto a player's hand and map individual fingers. The implications for Guitar Hero-style games, for example, could be significant. "It could see my fingers pretty well," Tsunoda replies. "But a little kid's fingers... it's a bit harder at the maximum distance."

So Activision and EA's sales of plastic instruments are seemingly quite safe for the time being, and the tech demo itself is quite revealing. Assuming that what we're seeing on the tech screen is native resolution, the size of the RGB and IR windows suggests that even with an adult, finger-tracking could be asking a bit too much: resolution from the camera certainly isn't HD, and I didn't expect it to be, bearing in mind that Natal interfaces with the Xbox 360 via USB. This introduces a bandwidth bottleneck that at its theoretical maximum is 60MB per second. A 720p uncompressed stream running at 30FPS in 24-bit RGB easily outstrips that. While Tsunoda won't be drawn on Natal's actual resolution, intriguingly he does mention that the normal camera's resolution can be scaled down and that the IR feed can be scaled up. That being the case, I'm guessing that developers will be able to allocate bandwidth accordingly.

As the demo plays out, Tsunoda explains how the data is used to provide services such as an automatic sign-in to Xbox Live. The Natal sensor literally recognises you when you walk in front of it. "We use the infra-red to get a 3D scan of who you are," he says. "And then also using the voice combined with the infra-red to determine who it is." Natal's voice recognition sounds similar to that found in the new iPhone 3GS, so in theory you can negotiate the interface with aural commands such as "play movie". The tech can also be deployed in a vast range of other non-gaming situations. "You can do a video party chat, no headsets required," Tsunoda enthuses. "You can have a living room of people video-chatting with another living room of people using Live, the video camera and the multi-array mic together."

All of the key image-processing is done by Natal's in-built silicon, leaving the Xbox 360 free to power the game itself, and you would think that processing up to four different skeletons simultaneously could impose some kind of performance hit. "If you're going to be tracking all 48 points, it's going to be a little more on the processor than just one person," reckons Tsunoda. "And you can do up to four, but it's not going to be hugely processor-intensive either way." Not a hugely revealing answer - and it's something that can't be tested during the demo, as we only see two skeletons being processed simultaneously - but if the doubling of the load is going to impact Natal's refresh rate, we don't see anything on the tech screens to indicate this. It looks absolutely solid.

Overall, you can easily see why Microsoft is excited about this. Nintendo took the GameCube, added a new interface and a few tech tweaks and turned a poorly performing product into a market leader. Xbox 360 is already a commercial and critical success, it has a clear HD advantage, and its motion-sensing system is like nothing else. In many ways, Natal is the natural evolution of the Wii remote - one of the first impressions I have when using it is that the human body doubles up for almost all of the functions of the Nintendo controller. You are the Wiimote, and its potential to expand the appeal and the reach of the Xbox 360 is astonishing.

The applications of the technology are immense, and will be limited only by the imagination of the developers - and this is where Microsoft's first parties in particular have got their work cut out for them. Wii works because the innovative hardware is backed by some of the most gifted developers in the world, who have successfully managed to capture the imagination of a new type of gamer. Compare and contrast this with the company that has brought us commercial flops like Lips and You're In The Movies. In short, the raw tech is there to completely and utterly outquaff the Wii controller in every single way, but Microsoft's biggest challenge is going to about upping its game-making skills to match and exceed the best that Nintendo has to offer.

As for the core gamer, the jury's still out. The Burnout Paradise demo proves that Natal can be interfaced nicely with the fast action arcade game, and yes, it's playable, but in many ways the concept is held back by the inefficiencies of the human body. Pulling your foot back to engage the brake simply takes longer for a human being to manage as opposed to pulling a trigger or pressing a button - even if Natal operated with zero latency, which certainly in the Breakout demo it doesn't, it would not be the optimal way to play it.

In FPS parlance, it would be similar to comparing a joypad to the keyboard/mouse combo: both playable, but with one being much more precise. I can see alternate control systems being factored in, and I can also see clever functionality tweaks, additions and shortcuts being added to the control systems and interfaces of core games using the Natal tech, but still with the pad as the primary interface. Technologically, there's nothing to stop developers using both simultaneously. For example, the archetypal Xbox 360 shooter could still use joypad commands, but melee combat would work far more nicely if you were literally smacking your opponent in the face via motion control. Similarly, lobbing a grenade might be another application that would be better suited to Natal.

One thing I do find intriguing is the concept of Natal perhaps being able to track head movements, and thus turning the player's display from a flat representation of the world into more of a window into it - a sort of revisiting of the old VR concept. Head-tracking using hacked Wii controls produces quite outstanding results, as seen on YouTube. The author of that video, Johnny Lee, is now NDA-bound and apparently working for... Microsoft. Similar to the way game-makers push console technology to the limits and beyond, I can see the same thing happening for Natal, and that is hugely exciting.

The bottom line is that is that the core principles of the standard controller are decades old now, and with good reason. Natal will get more casual gamers interested in what are traditionally enthusiasts' games, but Microsoft will really have a tough job convincing core gamers to move across full-time once the novelty factor has worn off. As it is, in the form I play it at gamescom, I can't see Natal changing the old style of games and the way we play them that much. Similar to what Nintendo achieved with the Wii, we will simply see new types of software more suited to the unique properties that Natal brings to the table - and while the playable demos I get to sample are interesting, the true greatness and the real potential of Natal has yet to be seen.