The information is apparently the result of behind-closed-door meetings in the UK between Microsoft and third party developers. Microsoft will be manufacturing 5 million Natals for a worldwide launch in November 2010 (some of those standalone, some of those in 360 bundles), and price is a major concern for the company. Those who left meetings were under the impression that Natal alone will run anywhere from $50-$80 with 14 games included—"impulse buy" territory.

I've always expected that Natal would launch inexpensively, closer to new Wii hardware and PS webcams than an actual new console. But $50 would be a very tempting sweet spot, indeed. [MCV via Kotaku]

So, I won't be surprised if it's $150, or even more, honestly.

Here's how everyone's still-favorite Microsoft figurehead (sorry Ballmer!) sees camera-based motion tech playing out:

[The concept also works] for media consumption as a whole, and even if they connect it up to Windows PCs for interacting in terms of meetings, and collaboration, and communication...I think the value is as great for if you're in the home, as you want to manage your movies, music, home system type stuff, it's very cool there.

Combined with his statements that it's specifically "Windows guys" who've latched onto the technology, this implies something like a motion-controlled Windows, core application set or, at the very least, Media Center. He doesn't offer any specifics, but gesture-based music, video and photo manipulation aren't too difficult to imagine. What about office uses?:

...I think there's incredible value as we use that in the office connected to a Windows PC. So Microsoft research and the product groups have a lot going on there, because you can use the cost reduction that will take place over the years to say, why shouldn't that be in most office environments.

So the coolest thing about Natal in the workplace is, based on what we know now, "cost reduction." Guys, I want dance-actuated PowerPoint presentations at a minimum.

We'll probably see some meatier details about Microsoft's wider motion control ambitions soon enough, but even with this scant information, it's fair to say that the company is serious about the technology. We're well overdue for an overhaul to the way we interact with computers, and the fact that Microsoft is aware of this—and doing something about it—is promising. Tentatively. [CNET]

This isn't the motion controller wand we saw at E3. It looks a little more like Microsoft's Project Natal, except you'd actually be using physical objects—anything you had lying around—as a motion controller.

The object (demonstrated in the diagram by that U-shaped-looking thing) is mapped into the system by rotating it in front of the camera, and saving it as a file.

If this sees the light of day, I give it 24 hours until we see the first YouTube video of someone playing Killzone with their Chihuahua.

I also wonder if Sony will comment on this patent when it coughs up more details on its E3 announcements at the Develop Conference on July 14.

[Siliconera via Kotaku]

Broken by Kotaku, Sony met with developers to better explain their motion controller follow E3. Here's what was passed along:

• Spring 2010 release schedule (still no price)
• Four motion controllers can be tracked at one time
• The PlayStation Eye will support voice input/recognition, face/head tracking
• Sony would like to combine motion controller and Dual Shock gameplay
• Motion control sucks some PS3 horsepower, so developers will need to accommodate it

While Sony has been developing all the aforementioned technologies for some time, we can't help but see a few capabilities pointed out here—voice/facial recognition/tracking—that were neglected in Sony's E3 presentation. Is it possible that the positive response to Natal has made Sony reassess which components of their system are most marketable to developers? Yeah, it's possible. [Kotaku]

The new device will be equipped with technology that is "really, really, close" to an actuality. The console, which was described as having a "natural interface," will have a built in camera with the ability to recognize movement and voice.

This, of course, is referring to Project Natal—and it backs up earlier rumors that a new console would debut in the fall. But the question remains, are we really talking an entirely new console here or simply some sort of bundle? As you might recall, Microsoft's VP of Interactive Entertainment John Schappert referred to the Xbox as being "less than halfway done" earlier this month. So, things are a bit confusing at the moment.

UPDATE: Microsoft has responded to the Ballmer statement, reiterating that the Xbox is not even halfway through it's life cycle.

As the Xbox team stated at E3 two weeks ago, we are not even halfway through the current console generation lifecycle and believe Xbox 360 will be the entertainment center in the home for long into the next decade. Project Natal will be an important part of this platform, but we have not confirmed a launch date at this time.

[TG Daily via Crunchgear]

...in addition to built-in Natal tech, a key feature of the next Xbox would be full HD stereoscopic 3D visuals similar to 3D movie theatres.

And that's everything they said on the matter.

So while the Xbox 360 would be getting Natal, the Xbox 720 (or whatever you want to call it) could have Natal and 3D immersion. TeamXbox claims that the 720 won't be launched until 3D television solutions go more mainstream, which by my guesstimation won't happen within four years.

Still, with Hollywood's focus on 3D, it's not hard to believe that Microsoft would design their home entertainment console to match—even if the risk would be huge.

But for now, this is all just rumor. If TeamXbox's portable Xbox story comes to fruition, we'll allow ourselves to get a little more excited. [TeamXbox via Maxconsole]

The rumor states that Microsoft will be debuting a totally new console that will include native Project Natal support, full backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 software, and with slightly updated muscle to handle newer games. Supposedly, it'll be released in fall 2010.

Microsoft did mention that with the debut of Natal, the Xbox 360's lifespan is "less than halfway done," but we think it'd be a mistake to release a game-changing new control system as an entirely new console rather than a more affordable peripheral when we've seen that a peripheral is all that's needed to handle Natal. Further, the way Microsoft has phrased talk about the Xbox 360's lifespan implies to us that the humble white console is going to be around for awhile: "There's still an awful lot left we can do with that piece of hardware, so we're going to continue to do that," said Microsoft's VP of Interactive Entertainment John Schappert.

We don't think the rumor really makes sense, but maybe it's just wishful thinking; we don't want to have to buy an entirely new console, but we just might have to if that's the only way to get our hands (well, our entire bodies) on Project Natal. [1UP]

Microsoft's initial announcement was prerecorded and very controlled, and our early hands-on experiences couldn't be filmed. Microsoft loosened up tonight, letting Fallon and, uhh, Jim from The Office jump in and out of Natal's sensor area to take control of live demos on national TV. As a segment, it was a little awkward, even in the context of Jimmy Fallon's show. As a tech demo? Drawn large across a 108-inch Sharp LCD, Natal came off as a tiny bit glitchy, but otherwise fantastic. [NBC]

Nintendo:
• Nintendo E3 Keynote
• Wii Vitality Sensors Turns Wii into Definitive Nursing Home Console
•Nintendo Wii MotionPlus Hands On: One Year, Three Games Later
• Why the Original Wiimote Didn't Have MotionPlus
• Nintendo: We Could Be Stuck With the Wii for 8 More Years
• Power Up Charging Stand Recharges the Wii Punch-Out Board
• Mad Catz Wiimote Feels Like the Real Thing for $10 Less
• Nyko Zoom Case: 'Cause You Don't Care If Your DSi Is Actually Portable
• Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata Says He Wouldn't Use a Mac or iPhone if Apple Was a Competitor
• Old Feuds Reunite Between Nintendo and Sega
• The Difference Between Sony and Nintendo at E3
•5 Things That Should've Been at E3 But Weren't

Microsoft:
• Microsoft E3 Keynote
• Testing Project Natal: We Touched the Intangible
• Xbox 360 Project Natal Full Body Motion Control One Ups the Wii
• Project Natal Won E3, and Maybe the Motion Control Wars
•Microsoft: Project Natal Is "The Endgame"
• Project Natal on Video
• Download Xbox Live Full Retail Games on Demand
• Microsoft Says Xbox 360 Is "Less Than Halfway Done
• Where Is Xbox Live Anywhere?
• Facebook and Twitter on Xbox 360
• Netflix Lets You Add to Queue, Zune Video Marketplace Gets 1080p Instant Streaming
• Xbox Live Spillover: New Avatars, Where's Hulu and Why I Hope You Have Fast Internet
• Halo 3 ODST Collector's Edition Controller Won't Fit in Convenant Hands
• The Xbox Needs Apps
• 5 Things That Should've Been at E3 But Weren't

Sony:
• Sony's E3 Keynote
• PS3 Motion Controller May Be the Best Game Motion Capture Yet
• Hands On: Is The PSP Go! Too Small?
• Sony to Offer New Digital Copies Of Your Old UMD Games
• Everything You Need to Know About the PSP Go!
• Sony: Dual Shock Still Defacto, Motion Control Secondary
• Sony PlayStation Motion Controller Video: How It Works
• The Difference Between Sony and Nintendo at E3
• 5 Things That Should've Been at E3 But Weren't

Aaaand that's it. Hope you liked our coverage of E3 as much as we liked covering it!

Keep in mind, the name "Natal"—referring to a city in Brazil—doesn't really do the platform's infancy any justice. It should really be called "Project Prenatal," as the peripheral's dev kits just shipped to the first set of developers this week.

But after testing the system and getting a good look at what makes its motion tracking tick, I'm going to fanboy out a bit on the platform, as responsibly and logically as I can. Here's why I think Natal is a watershed in motion controls.

For a Motion System It Facilitates Passive Entertainment
People are lazy. If we can use a remote instead of changing a channel on the television five feet away, we'll use a remote. And I'd argue that if we can login to our preferred entertainment by just sitting on the couch (through Natal's facial recognition), we'll do that next. Is talking or gesturing more simple than channel surfing on a remote? Not necessarily, but...

Voice Recognition Is Still Promising Technology
Just because we haven't managed to perfect voice recognition doesn't mean we should write it off in every product into the future. It's getting better all the time, helped by increased processing power, and once you integrate voice into a system, it allows you to jump deeper into any tree of menus than most UIs allow. For instance, on an iPod, you have to navigate through a handful of separate screens to get to a particular artist. With voice recognition, you'd just say that artist's name.

Natal Can Support Peripherals Too, You Stupid, Stupid Idiots
If there was one thing I couldn't stand hearing again and again at E3, it was that Natal would force all gamers to mime controls in every game. Not true—at least, not for any reason made clear to me. Programmers would be free to include all kinds of controllers should they chose to. And if Natal's cameras are tracking 48 points on your body in 3D space, and its software can distinguish you from various non-human objects, I find it hard to believe that you couldn't hold an actual steering wheel to play a racing game, if you wanted to. Personally, I've grown a bit sick of tripping over plastic controllers in my living room, but I'm sure that third-party devs and hardware manufacturers will be happy to integrate and sell all the acrylic modular baseball bats you can stand.

Natal Can't Cost More Than a Party's Worth of Wiimotes
No one knows what Natal will cost. But you know what? I doubt it will cost more than $242, the amount a Wii owner needs to spend to outfit their console with controllers for four people. Microsoft was not specific as to the number of gamers supported simultaneously in Natal's multiplayer (to be fair, we haven't seen the system fully tracking wireframes beyond two people at a time). But a future in which a console's price isn't doubled by its peripherals sounds pretty appealing to us.

Natal Tracks 48 Points, Nintendo and Sony Track 1, Maybe 2 Points
Sony's Wiimote-like demo was the best physically-based motion tracking I'd ever seen. It was pretty freaking impressive to watch augmented reality replaced Sony's controller with a sword, whip and even bow and arrow. But even with two controllers, Sony and Nintendo's systems are really only tracking two single objects (perfectly) in space. So when you are swinging that sword with so much flourish, the human figure is just an arbitrary placeholder. How will you dodge? Or should I say, how will you feel like you're dodging? The D-pad, I can almost guarantee. OK...so how will you kick?

Natal Would Be Too Good To Be True...In Nintendo or Sony's Hands
Other companies could (and have) made infrared body-tracking cameras. Why are we so confident in Natal? Aside from our positive hands-on experience, Natal has Microsoft middleware/dev tools behind it. Where few third parties have wielded the Wiimote with as much finesse as Nintendo, and Sony is traditionally mute on how companies can unlock the power of their complicated hardware architecture, Microsoft launches Xbox products with the software necessary to make them work. Oh, and Microsoft is approaching Natal with 100% earnestness, calling the platform "the endgame." Sony's motion control, according to Sony, is less important.

The Coolest Mind In Motion Controls Says It Exceeds Anything He's Seen
Johnny Chung Lee, the same guy behind those crazy-awesome Wiimote mods, is working on the project. And he says this about it:

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. At times, working on this project has felt like a miniature "Manhattan project" with developers and researchers from around the world coming together to make this happen.

That quote's more than just hype—it's educated hype.

Also, if you haven't seen Lee's video showing off the potential of headtracking in displays, do so right now. Why? Because I'm all but positive that headtracking is one of many unannounced features in Natal that will change the way we think of 3D, without a 3D display.

I don't know that Natal will render the PS3's motion controls (or Nintendo's new Wii MotionPlus) completely worthless overnight. I do think there's a level of speed and accuracy (60 fps!) with which Sony will be able to duplicate a good old blunt instrument, possibly even better than Natal. (Then again, no one has actually played Sony's prototype.)

But an idea as bold as Project Natal, in the hands of Microsoft, which has been on its game, so to speak, with the 360...yeah, it took E3 in my book. And next year, when there are some actual games to see on the platform, it damn well might take E3 again. [Project Natal on Gizmodo]

That means the Xbox 360 will live twice as long as the original Xbox, which essentially had four years before the Xbox 360 arrived and Microsoft unceremoniously dumped it. That's 8 years. The original Xbox does still live in other ways, though—Schappert said that "hundreds of thousands" of people still play Xbox Live on it. Similarly, Live will obviously live on in whatever comes after the Xbox 360 he said. He reiterated again, though, that "there's still an awful lot left we can do with that piece of hardware, so we're going to continue to do that...I don't even think we're halfway through the life of the Xbox 360." He continued, "if we were not able to reinvent the interface, introduce avatars, introduce new services, we might be talking about new hardware right now." When "we need new hardware to deliver new experiences, that's when we'll start talking about new hardware."

One thing we obviously missed at E3, given how broadly Microsoft has expanded the Xbox 360's scope was the "game-changing" Zune integration promised in the Zune HD announcement. Schappert said that "game-changing" was "meant to refer less to games and more to our Zune video launch." Zune audio on the other hand, he had nothing to say about: "We're not announcing anything else right now, but obviously we're gonna continue to partner with our Zune friends. What you see today is a lot different that last year, so you're going to continue to see us innovate, bring new things, bring new experiences."

So that deeper Zune integration, it's coming. Eventually. One day. Hopefully. Maybe. [Giz@E3]

In many ways, Ubisoft's new solution is like a Project Natal Lite: it's a game accessory, not a system accessory; it tracks some motion, but not much; it uses your body more for feedback than actual game control. Relieved of context, it looks pretty great, even if it fuels criticism that the Wii is become less of a gaming system, and more of a personal health appliance. Now, though, everyone will look to Nintendo for an answer—any answer—to the awesome motion gaming tech we've seen from Sony and Microsoft in the last few days. This is what they'll see. [Gametrailers via Pocketlint]

Matt Buchanan tested Project Natal today, as did I. Here is his personal take on the technology right alongside mine. We did not share our independent experiences before pasting the text below. Neither of us were allowed to shoot what was happening on screen—hence the crazy pics of our bodily reactions, and that intensely audible racing-game video.

How Natal Works
The test system was an ordinary Xbox 360, connected to small PC and camera that simulates the final Natal rig. There are two cameras—one RGB, for face recognition and display video, and one infrared, for tracking movement and depth. Why infrared? The eye doesn't see infrared light. And when you combine an infrared camera with an infrared emitter (also part of Natal), a room is flooded with a spectrum of invisible light that works in the dark.

Natal also has its own internal processing system handling an unspecified amount of the heavy lifting behind Natal's cleaver image and speech recognition. It breaks the human body into 48 points tracked in real time, and it can sense your whole body in Z space, or depth. In fact, on a heat map that measured depth, my hands appeared hotter than my shoulders—because they were closer.

Natal is so smart, in fact, that, if your room is narrowed by a pair of couches, it can signal to a game to narrow the level. It can see about 15' x 20' of a room, according to project leader Kudo Tsunoda's informal estimation.

Breakout
Matt: My first taste was talking to the father of Project Natal, Kudo Tsunoda and watching as his simple, small hand gestures were mapped perfectly onto the screen. He started up the ballsmacker demo you might have seen in our liveblog, knocking a swarm of balls into wall with every part of his body.

When Kudo gestured to me try it, I jumped right in and immediately started smacking at balls with my hands and feet and knees and arms and head as one ball exploded into many, like a virus, until I was doing sad white ninja jerking and jumping movements. Kudo didn't tell me how to "set it up" or what to do. I just did it. You have to realize, Kudo towers over me. I didn't have to calibrate it to my body size, or stand in a weird way for it to adjust. It just worked. Well, until I broke it at the end—it froze up after a few rounds and had to be rebooted for Mark. Hey, it's an early tech demo, so don't read into it. Until that point, it worked remarkably, incredibly well—better than I expected, honestly. The bright fluorescent lights were turned off and on, and Natal didn't flinch. My real movements translated exactly how I expected them to—the precise position, velocity—90 percent of the time, no matter how ridiculously I moved, and some of the other 10 percent might've just been my own bad timing. But the result is a remarkable sense of control. Immersion.

Mark: Microsoft loaded the 3D Breakout demo we saw at their press conference. I stepped up to a white piece of tape right after Matt, and given that I'm 4 inches taller, Natal needed to account for my larger size.

After about 10 seconds, the blue, ghost-like figure filled in. And he was both taller and bigger-handed than Matt's avatar. Natal noticed that I'm a bigger guy. It made no adjustments for the fact that I'm also better looking.

The first thing I noticed was a slight lag I hadn't intended. It's not horrible, but my avatar moved a hair more slowly than I did. That didn't stop me from reaching up, spiking the imaginary ball at a wall imaginary bricks, and then flailing around to keep up with 2, 3, 4, 5 and more spheres flying at me at once.

My avatar recognized both my pitiful kicks and swipes. And while my avatar never left the ground when I jumped, this turned out to be but an animation limitation within Microsoft's tech demo. My wireframe preview image and heatmap did leave the ground. Besides, this is nitpicking. On the PS2 I played Nike Kinetic, something a bit similar. And I always wanted to be having fun. But on Natal, even in a stuffy windowless room surrounded by Microsoft execs, I was having fun. (Disregard my stern, focused face in these pictures.)

Burnout Revenge
Matt: The Burnout racing-game demo was a little more abstract—in one sense, I almost wished I had a wheel to turn, a pedal to press, because I wanted the feedback. I had trouble getting used to "pressing" the gas, which you do by moving your right foot forward. I threw myself off-balance by taking a ginormous step toward the Frankenstein's lab of demo equipment along the wall (upon which I could see myself represented in infared, covered in boxes like smallpox). But turning my air steering wheel, I felt completely in control. A lot of that was the software—it registered even the smallest pivots of my elbows that sent my forearms right or left—but the way it responded exactly how I expected it to is what made it feel so natural. Which is the real key here. It feels natural.

After I hit full speed on a straightaway, I tried to do a 180. I crashed into a wall and died. Normally, that'd make me bad. But I couldn't stop smiling that I'd held the future of gaming control in my hands—and it was simply air.

Mark: As soon as Matt crashed, I greedily jumped in, asking him if it was OK but not waiting for him to answer. I wanted to play Natal more, and I've played a ton of Burnout.

Burnout showcases a few important points for Microsoft. First, it's a real game that's been on the 360. So Natal doesn't weigh down on the processors so hard that you can't play games. Second, it requires fine motor control.

I raised my hands in the air, mining a steering wheel. I hadn't given the system any time to scan my body after kicking Matt out, but I stepped by foot forward, signaling the gas all the same. The car accelerated. I twisted my arms. The car turned just the right amount.

Microsoft had clearly tweaked the Burnout code a bit, forcing the car to feel a bit more like a powerful sedan than a street illegal beast out of some Fast and Furious sequel. And I'm guessing that Natal's ever so slight control delay was masked by the feeling of a looser-driving steering wheel that we find in more standard cars.

So I floor it, growing confident as I wave through traffic and slowly build speed. I reach maximum velocity, throw my foot back to break, cut the wheel and toss the car into a spin. Yes. This feels right. Just right.

Holy shit.

But Natal can't work this well. It just CAN'T. I need to break it, teach this Microsoft prototype a little humility. What if I stand on my tip toes and steer eight feet in the air?

The car handles fine.

What if I kneel on the ground and steer?

Yup, it still works, save for a moment when my knee shifted and I tricked the machine—a fair mistake, even by my highly ridiculous dork standards.

Closing Thoughts
Matt: Project Natal is the vision of gaming that's danced through people's heads for decades—gaming without the abstraction of controllers, using your body and natural movements—which came more sharply into focus when Nintendo announced the Wii a few years ago. I haven't been quite this blown away by a tech demo in a long time. It looked neat onstage at Microsoft's keynote. Seeing it, feeling it in person, makes me want to believe that this what the future of gaming looks like—no buttons, no joysticks, no wands. The only thing left to get rid of is the screen, and even that'll happen soon enough.

Mark: 2010...or maybe even 2011...is just too long to wait. I want Natal now.


Kudo Tsunoda Testing Natal: