Project Natal Just $50 and Available in Fall 2010

British games magazine MCV reports that Project Natal may hit stores as soon as Fall 2010, and for as little as $50.  Not only that, but Project Natal may ship up to 5 million units, flooding the retail channel during next year's critical Holiday Season.

It's been known for a while that Microsoft has been showing Natal to developers in hopes of gaining further games support for the device.  MCV seems to have confirmed this information today.  Pricing Natal at $50 would make the device much more attractive to customers - and 5 million for an initial shipment would be a strong indication from Microsoft that they stand behind the unit.

Project Natal will track the players motions with a camera, and also have an embedded microphone.  Microsoft hopes to bring interactivity with their system to a level beyond that of the Nintendo Wii.  Some elements of the system include facial recognition, voice recognition, and gestures available within the Xbox 360 Dashboard for navigational purposes.  For example, as you walk into the room, Natal would recognize you, and sign in your Xbox Live account.  From there, you'd brush your hand back and forth in the air to navigate to your game.  Once in your game, you might hold your hands like a steering wheel to control your car.  Another interesting example of the tech was shown at E3 2009, where "Milo" an artificial little boy responded to conversational and other queues from the user.

Most major game makers, including Electronic Arts and Blizzard Activision have announced that they'll be developing titles for the device.

 

Comments

Sort By:   Oldest Post on Top (default) Newest Post on Top By Votes (surveys or insightful posts)

No comments were found for this thread.

You are not logged in.  Log in using the fields at the top of the page.

Post Your Comments!  Use the area below to insert your comments.  Stage Select Users can use the special editor to format comments just about any way that they'd like. It appears that you are not logged in! As a reminder, Stage Select users get a sweet comment editor, they get to vote on comments, they can edit their signatures, quote other users, and a whole heck of a lot more. Join Stage Select Today! All limits for anonymous posters:  No HTML is allowed (including links and pictures), no retention of copyright, custom signatures disabled, custom avatar disabled, no comment voting, posts don't count toward achievements, no user profile page, no game collection page, no quoting, stronger spam filtering, posts start with lower karma score, CAPTCHA is required. Title (500 characters max): Comments: Enter the code shown: