Project Natal coming in October, says Jonathan Ross (video)
As unexpected sources of tech news go, UK television presenter Jonathan Ross is pretty high up there. But lo and behold, the man's had a chance to spend some quality time with Microsoft's Project Natal setup and while he's not altogether impressed with the current state of it, his note on when it's coming out is the one thing nobody has known for sure yet. "Got until October" may mean an October release, or it may imply they can work on it through October in time for an early November release (something we heard earlier), but altogether we find this both credible and logical considering the natural urge to try and get the latest gaming tech in well before the holidays. Need more convincing? Skip past the break to see the Wossmeister having a whale of a time with that balloon-blocking game that's embarrassed many a journalist already.
























"Wossy" is not a verified twitter account...
@geekthree
Is anything on Twitter really ever verified?
@LAY Well.. the verified accounts are....
I mean, you just can't be sure otherwise.. right?
Like @ Jesus, I know he's pretty convincing.. but I some how have a hard time believing Jesus is just sitting chilling out with a copy of TweetDeck open..
@geekthree
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/jonathan-ross/
I think the twitter link on the bottom right hand menu might be a bit of a giveaway to confirm it!
@mavoric
Plus he's posted tons of personal pictures of himself around and about taken on his phone...so I'd say it's pretty conclusive that it's the real him...
@geekthree
Well the real Jesus will have a lot of followers, and gets retweeted by the pope and Pat Roberson.
@geekthree
Not everyone who uses twitter gets verified, it's mostly celebrities (music, tv, etc) and high profile billionaires/millionaires.
If I were to use your logic, I could say the same thing about Joshua Topolsky, his twitter account isn't verified either...
@mavoric ahhhh... I never spend any time floating round the BBC website, nice to see a little authenticity though
@geekthree So it wasn't enough just for one person to raise the fact that it was him, you ALL needed to jump on the guy ?
@mavoric If natal is going to suceed, microsoft is going to have to make a clear divide between Natal and the conventional 360. If games are going to have both types of controls, the more serious game developers are going to go elsewhere. Opinions: http://bit.ly/project-natal-in-action-and-concept
It's him, he's talked about his @Wossy Twitter account on his chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.
Because johnathan ross is a good source.
@ratchetnclank
NO, IT IS NOT.
A good (unique) and valid source is Microsoft, otherwise is just a unfounded gossip.
@magallanes
This site would be really boring if they just waited for press releases to talk about anything.
@ratchetnclank
Because that video is just all puffery, correct? Twitter acct + vid. I mean, what more could you ask f... OMG I just got Natal in the mail!!!!!! It's October already?
Well, there you go... there is more that you could use to prove that is real, you'll just have to wait until October.
@ratchetnclank
Jonathan Ross is an arrogant tosser.
@(Unverified) Chill out Andrew...
That really does not look like that much fun.
@bullzeye20 That's what they said about the Wii.
@Altairantares
And they were right about the Wii.
@bullzeye20
I disagree. I think it looks hilarious.
But only to watch.
@bullzeye20
But if you are flailing around like that while playing Wii, then you are probably playing wrong.
Few games (most sports games like Wii Sports, etc.) actually require big arm movements to play.
Those things needs to get manufactured around october to be available for the holidays, like Microsoft said it will be.
So, no news here.
Video games are suppose to be played with fingers and thumbs. If I wanted to play physical games I would go outside.
@crearian
there's an original argument
@crearian Or you could play DDR, Rock Band, Nintendo Wii and racing sims (with racing wheels)
@SewerShark DDR is for Kids, racing games are the exception and I tried the Wii... I found it mildly amusing.
@SewerShark DDR is for kids, racing games are the exception and I did try the Wii... I found it mildly amusing.
Ross is an avid gamer - I once had a long chat with his about lost weekends due to gaming - him and his missus spending entire weekends only pausing for food and drink while doing the megadrive version of castlevania amongst others. I expected to come away from the chat sneering about him but I didn't - he knew what he was on about and he genuinely loved his games.
For this sort of thing, this ultra mainstream type of thing, the likes of Ross probably will be how they are announced and hyped, in the UK the specialist press is taken for granted but column inches in the likes of loaded fought over, a friend who worked for the offical UK Ninty mag got more backhanders and free crap doing a one page thing for a lads mag than he ever got in the specialist magazines.
He has worked with Microsoft before a little bit, on fable. Lending his voice. I imagine that with the full-body tracking Natal, computers can now find him creepy too.
I don't read this as an October release. I still see it as Thanksgiving or so; October just being when they have to have it ready to be manufactured.
Jason Bradbury from the Gadget Show also attended the same event. Same feedback as Wossy, lots of potential but needs tweaking before release.
You guys keep saying "manufactured" Implying Natal is not 100% software. A camera is not hard to build, I'm sure they're way past the hardware stage.
Either way, I'd rather wield a sword vr pretending I do. So I'm not exactly impressed yet.
@Colrath so weild a sword, they already said that the natal can recognize objects and scan them in.
"OK, Before bed"...really?
@One Love
Yeah...I was wondering why that was there too. Also, why did he separate the X from the Box? Was he trying to be sneaky so it wouldn't show up in any timelines? lol
So he calls it impressive, but he's not that impressed? Sounds like you guys need to boost your reading comprehension skills.
@Bananarama
That's what i was about to say... but leave it to engadget to put a negative spin on anything MS!
@Bananarama Welcome to Engadget. Unless you use the words "beautiful", "amazing" and "incredible" at least 50 times to describe your product, don't expect enthousiasm to run very high among the editors.
Please it's a EPIC FAIL.
@Inspector Gadget80 Wow, there's some damn fine reasoning behind that comment!
EPIC COMMENT FAIL.
dam Natal's lag looks sucky...
What happened at 0:30?
I was watching the video to see how well Natal could accurately show his body movements and it all looks fairly good until the 30 second mark. To me it looks like the real life guy just moved back and forth really quick and the natal blue character's left leg came up or something like a bicycle kick but then in the next frame it seems to be correct. I'm not exactly sure what happened because the video is hard to see but if this type of positioning error is occurring in a game where all of your limbs are easy to differentiate since they're spread out and all on relatively the same depth plane then I can't imagine what would happen with fighting games where most of your movements would be towards the screen.
Also, does anyone know the technology the camera uses to determine depth? Is it lasers or radar? From what i understand that camera sends each pixel data with the normal color data but also has depth determined for each pixel somehow.
Maybe it means they have until October, and if they haven't got it working well be then, it gets the ax.
WTF is an "X Box?"
@AckbarsFist Ask your mother
I much prefer Sony's concept, infinity more precise and for me it offers way more possibilities than the Natal project. Sony tried this on the eye toy and failed. I'm sure Natal will be 100000 times better than the eye toy. I will continue enjoying plain old games with my standard controller for my X360E.
@Twinkle Tits
Unless natal has the ability to surpass a handheld controller (which it doesnt) it will just be another forgotten gimmick like the eye toy
I see natal being aimed mainly at kids tbh
All i know is.....if they make a real lightsaber game....i'm sold.
Then again I have kid nieces and nephews which means I'm sold anyway.
@GoonieGooGoo without a handheld peripheral, how could that be done