“Project Natal” was announced on Monday at Xbox 360’s E3 Press Briefing. For those unfamiliar, Natal is a camera peripheral with motion sensing capabilities, depth perception and programming with facial and voice recognition. However, Natal isn’t just a game peripheral – it’s a game changer. Natal cannot, and should not be limited to games either. The great thing about Natal is it has the potential to truly revolutionize the living room experience, far beyond allowing you to play your favorite racing games without a wheel or playing Halo without a gun.* The vision for Natal can be about creating an entirely new experience for consumers, allowing them to manage all types of media and content.
*I would not be excited about either experience. In my opinion, driving needs a wheel, and FPS games need a controller, content and graphics, not a gimmick.
Full disclosure: For those that do not know, I work for Xbox 360. The views and opinions I represent are absolutely not views and opinions of Microsoft or Xbox 360. Additionally,  I’m biased here. So just take these as caveats.

First off, depending upon the precision of the camera, the whole Minority Report-esque ability to flip through programs easily and seamlessly could allow users to easily and quickly browse through music libraries (Zune?) and DVD libraries (Zune HD, Netflix?). Not to mention, innovative use of voice recognition could allow you to say “Play The Beatles” and have it start your music library immediately.* But that’s not even a fraction of the implications that Natal has.
*Alternatively I suppose it could start The Beatles: Rock Band I suppose

One of the most intriguing uses of Natal is Milo – a virtual human that can interact with the user and recognize verbal and emotional cues. Not only that, but in the demonstration, you can give Milo a sheet of paper that gets scanned through the camera’s interface. Milo was created by Lionhead Studios, the creators of Black & White and Fable. Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios and a lead designer for Project Natal has had plenty of experience developing worlds that truly interact with a user and environments that change based on user input. Imagine beyond just creating an RPG-type game using this virtual human. Imagine Milo as a French or Spanish tutor that you could spend hours with a day learning a language. Or, imagine this tool as a babysitter that can interact with children and play games while a parent is away. Yes it’s futuristic, and might be a little creepy, but you cannot deny the potential.

One thing I learned recently is that Johnny Chung Lee is involved with Natal. Famous for his research work in creating some incredible uses for the Wiimote, he has the type of innovative and creative mindset that could be perfect for realizing Natal’s potential. In his blog, he said: “We would all love to one day have our own personal holodeck. This is a pretty measurable step in that direction.” That should give you an idea of the breadth and ambition that the team is going for.

For Project Natal to reach its potential; for Natal to succeed, it needs to be much more than a gaming experience. For a project that was described by lee as exceeding “anything that I’ve seen in academic research, never mind a consumer project” and as a “miniature ‘Manhattan project’”, it would be a disservice to the technology for it to remain solely a gaming product. I hope that the joint knowledge and expertise of the Xbox, Zune and Windows teams can put their heads together to provide the best living room experience possible.