Minority Report: Some Hope for Natal?

Last week at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft showed another video about its full-body motion-sensing controller for the Xbox 360: Project Natal.  For those not in the know, Natal consists of a camera that reads your body’s movements and translates them into actions or movements onscreen, sometimes involving a visual depiction of your body onscreen.  Microsoft’s most recent video includes some interviews about how the concept originated and was developed into the soon-to-be commercial project in the 2010 holiday season and details ideas about how the device will be used in games and to navigate the 360′s menus.

Although no new information was revealed in this video, it did strike me while watching that, despite some skepticism, I am actually excited for the device’s release.  That statement, however, must be clarified.  I, like others, fear that there will be an instantaneous diluge of shovelware “family” party games.  Leaving aside why developers believe that games lacking depth and creativity would be fun for a family to play together, I also believe that there will be some intelligent implementation of the device.

Perhaps it’s the fantasies sparked by Minority Report’s vision of controlling computers with s swipe of the hand, but I look forward to navigating the menus with motion control when I am not playing games.  I often use my 360 to search for new game videos or demos, catch up on Facebook updates and photos, and to stream the increasing library of Netflix videos available for streaming through the 360.  It would be great to turn on my 360 and settle in on the couch to do my perusing with a swipe of my hand here and there while I’m catching dinner.  And because that navigation involves Microsoft’s main interface, it’s probably going to be done well.

I also believe that some developers will get it.  MadWorld on the Wii is a great game that used motion controls but did so in a judicious manner so that it actually added to the game, using it only for specific special moves, instead of degrading it into an arm wrenching waggle-fest.  Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, Tiger Woods PGA Tour (both before and after Wii Motion Plus), and Boom Blox Bash Party all incorporate Wii motion control in a way that is intuitive and works well.  And I have high hopes from previews that motion control will be incorporated well into the more core Wii game Red Steel 2.  However it has taken time to get a library of games that make Nintendo’s motion controls noteworthy.  But it did eventually happen.

I think the same will be true of Natal.  Eventually there will be enough savvy developer support for Natal that there will be something to be excited about.  Something where maybe you still use the traditional controller but Natal reads certain body motions for specific, limited inputs.  Or maybe a game that uses Natal to read your facial expressions, to which the characters in the game will react.  Mass Effect 3, anybody?  Let’s just hope that it happens earlier in the cycle than it did for the Wii, which, admittedly, still leaves something lacking in terms of motion support.  With Peter Molyneux announcing that the popular Fable franchise will include some type of Natal integration in its next installment, there is yet some hope for Natal.

A lot of my excitement may depend on the price, though.  If it’s less than $100, maybe it would be worth it to have Minority Report menu navigation and a few tech demo quality games to tide me over until games start incorporating it wisely.  But if it’s more in the range of $200, it’s going to be hard to be excited about flicking my hand instead of moving the control stick to search through my Netflix queue.