I've been wanting to write about Microsoft's upcoming Project NATAL for a while now, but I've been trying to do so in a way that doesn' make me sound like a fan boy. From what I've seen so far of NATAL, the concept has potential, but I still have my doubts, and NATAL has raised a few questions in my mind.

1. Price: From what MS has shown of NATAL at E3, it looks like something that may carry a hefty price tag, until the actual price is annouced, this question is still up for debate.

2. Games: This is another thing that has thrown up a red flag about NATAL is how MS will deal with the 360s game library. NATAL has the potental to greatly improve 360 fighting games like Street Fighter IV and MK vs DC Universe, but I also wonder if they will pull a Nintendo and release a completly seperate line of games, designed to specifically to work with NATAL, similar to what Nintendo did with the Zapper, Power Glove, and ROB the Robot .

3. It's been tried before: In real life, my area of expertise is in History, and on the side I study the history of Video Games and three companies have tired NATAL-like devices in the past:

Atari had the Mind-Link, an unreleased controller for the 2600 that would've interprited the movements of the player's head muscles into game commands http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/mindlink.html

Sega had the Activator, an octogonal shaped controller that used infrared light to interperate the player's movements, which required it's own power adaptor, instead of being powered by the Genesis/Mega-Drive itself.

Nintendo of course had the Power Glove and the U-Force, both of which rarely worked, and required complicated codes in order for every game, and the Power Glove required recalibrating and recentering when simply changing a program for the game you were playing.

Of corse this is just my opinion.