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2010 Titles of Choice

First-person shooters

Halo Reach

Crysis 2

Medal of Honor

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Call of Duty: Vietnam (unofficial name)

Third-person shooters

Just Cause 2

Mercs Inc.

Red Dead Redemption

GTA V (unofficial name) (possible)

APB

Real time strategy games

Supreme Commander 2

Command & Conquer 4 (if a console release is probable)

Racing Games

Need for Speed: World

Role playing games

Fable III

Fallout 4 (possible)

Other games, tech, etc. to be aware of

Project Natal (peripheral accessory)

Milo & Kate

And for the finale, an in-depth explanation of how Project Natal works and how Microsoft got their hands on it. Project Natal is a 3D motion capture camera. It detects motion from a camera's perspective in a 3D realm and is set to compete with the Wii HD and Playstation Move. Basically, Nintendo was given two shots at getting their hands on Natal. Once at a Israeli conference where Natal was shown. Nintendo CEO was impressed, but couldn't think of a way to sell it at a reasonable price. Another Asian kid (on Youtube, if you search 3D Wii or something similar) was recruited for Natal after showing off his videos for the Wii. So, Nintendo is a bit late, yes, but let's see what Microsoft does.

Natal basically has three different cameras. A regular camera, a black-and-white camera, and a color camera. The regular camera is used for optimal lighting conditions. If conditions are not optimal, the other two cameras are used. The black-and-white camera sends white and black light rays, and when they bounce back, it gives data to Natal which uses it to create a 3D rendition of whatever Natal is looking at. Then the color camera sends color rays and sees which ones don't bounce back, thus creating a perfect recreation of the area Natal is staring at. An array of microphones allows each microphones to pick up multiple variations of the same sound, allowing Natal to utilize it's noise cancellation technology to drive out ambient noise (like your mom screaming at you to go clean up your room). Plus, Natal can recognize gestures (such as waving, clapping, etc.), facial recognition (so standing in front of Natal can automatically sign you in), and voice recognition (allowing Natal to distinguish between various voices), on top of skeletal mapping, which can identify 4 people at once and 48 skeletal points at 30 FPS. Facial recognition assigns a facial mapping to a certain Xbox Live account so you can stand in front of Natal as it signs you in. Not only that, but it assigns a specific voice frequency to the account as well. For skeletal mapping, if you get into a close enough distance, Natal can recognize individual finger movements as well.

Overall, Natal is a promising piece of technology. I would consider this 'Dumb AI' as it cannot think on its own (i.e. a mind), but it can perform a wide variety of tasks.

And that's all I got tonight, so see ya tomorrow. Hopefully.