Start practicing your body gestures. Microsoft’s Project Natal, a controller for its Xbox 360 that could radically redefine user control for video games and other devices, is expected to be released in October.
That date was given by Syed Bilal Tariq, a Microsoft marketing manager in Saudi Arabia, during an interview with a TV station in that country. In the videotaped interview, which was posted on video gamer site Gamertag Radio on Monday, Tariq said “he had great news to share with everyone.” The news was that Project Natal will be launched in Saudi Arabia at the same time as elsewhere — which he said will be in October.
‘You Are the Controller’
He added that the date will be confirmed at the E3 Expo trade show in June in Los Angeles. Microsoft itself is only saying that Project Natal will be launched by the holiday season.
An add-on to Xbox 360, Natal reads players’ body movements and turns them into actions and characters on the screen. Nintendo’s Wii created a sensation by its extensive use of a motion-sensing controller, but here body movements become the controller.
Sony is also getting into the body-sensing act. In March, it announced its motion-sensing controller, called Move, which looks like a microphone with a ping-pong ball on the top. Sony was an early innovator in this area with its Eye Toy, and the Move is Sony’s attempt to catch up with Nintendo. It allows the kind of actions that Nintendo’s controller does, but with greater accuracy. The company also believes it will satisfy hard-core game enthusiasts in ways that Nintendo’s solution does not while expanding its PlayStation 3’s appeal to non-gamer family members.
That appeal to non-gamers was the Wii’s ace in the hole, since the Sony and Microsoft game machines were focused on being sharper, more…