In a rare occasion, Ballmer apologized to the masses of gamers who were let down after the excitement of the news of an upcoming next generation console. After reports of gamers talking about the “new console” arose, Aaron Greenburg of Microsoft stated, “We’re not going to be launching a new console any time soon.” This devastated many excited gamers who are looking forward to any hints of next generation consoles to come in the distant future.

“I confused the issue with my poorly chosen words,” Ballmer told IGN. “There is no news in my comments.” Microsoft hasn’t officially confirmed a date for the release of the add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360, but Ballmer’s comments have led many to believe the “controller-free gaming and entertainment experience” will arrive sometime in 2010. Although, the confusion over the “new console” disappointed gamers, many are still excited about the upcoming feature for Xbox 360 which is likely to release in late 2010.

Project Natal, which was announced on June 1, 2009 featured many demos including a game called “Ricochet” where the player can use his or her body to bounce balls at blocks. Natal also allow players to log in to their console faced on facial recognition and try on clothes in 3D. Other demos shown at E3 were “Paint Party” where players can “throw” paint on walls using body motion and “Burnout Natal” where players can race in cars using their body motion to steel the wheel of the car instead of a controller that current gaming technology requires. Because of the new technology behind the project, the announcement has caused the Xbox 360 to gain more ground in the market.

The name Natal comes from Microsoft’s tradition of code naming products from cities. The name Natal, a city in Brazil, was chosen by Microsoft’s director, Alex Kipman, as a tribute to his home country. The word natal also means “relating to birth” where Microsoft shares its view that the addon is the “birth of the next-generation of home entertainment.”

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Microsoft demoed the technique at the E3 which means that the technique is already existing and working. Information on the techniques itself are scarce. From what could be gathered a hardware device is needed that will send the body’s motion and sounds to the Xbox gaming system. The system is able to follow the moves of every person in the room. It can easily identify and distinguish people. Natal cannot only identify people but also objects in the room.

This leads to some interesting new applications. Think of a quiz where the moderator addresses the gamers by name and repeats their answers.

Take a look at the videos below to get a good first impression on what Project Natal is about:

The official Youtube channel offers tons of videos showcasing Project Natal.

There are two factors that can influence the success of the new hardware device. First the price of the device. If it is expensive than it might become a niche product instead of the new default way of gaming. The second is game support by game developers. Game developers need to produce games for Natal or make their games compatible with the product.

What are your thoughts on Project Natal?

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The new game brings a huge change, instead of going for realism, they went for a cartoon look, which looks pretty stunning I think. Many will be deterred by this, I suspect especially hardcore gamers, but if I want realism I’ll jump down to a war zone and take a look myself. I think it’s quite unique and it makes the game more accessible to other ages and our friends of the female persuasion (I might be able to get my girlfriend to play a round with me!).

I haven’t played a lot with this series, I spent an hour or two with a newer one, and from what I can tell, the experience is much the same, but obviously very different due to the environment. I’m actually still waiting for my beta key, but to me the screenshots radiate much more of a fun factor than I’ve seen in games for a while.

Let us know if you’ve tried the game, I’ll add a comment as an update as soon as I give it a go, I can’t wait to shoot every one’s cartoon bum out of the sky, woohoo!

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Essentially it does what you could do manually, it finds the services and apps running that you don’t really need, and switches them all off with the push of a button. It switched off Launchy for me, the Aero theme for Vista, which apparently eats away at the CPU, some tablet services I didn’t even know I had running, etc., so it does quite a good job.

I actually didn’t notice a huge increase in performance, but the difference is there. I tested on GTA 4 which runs away on my system, but not very well. On minimum spec I can play pretty well, with only a few effects added. In very intense areas I noticed some performace issues were less prominent, like less lag and jittery camera, so it definitely did help. The best thing about this app is that it is so easy to use, no need to go through 20 services and shut them down, but even better, they can be restarted with the same one click action. This is also great for trips to prolong battery life!

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You have to move people between cities and move goods like oil and coal between the relevant industry. This probably sounds easy, but it is strangely fun!

The game requires the user to have a copy of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, as it relies on that game’s data for graphic files. If you have lost your copy, a bit of googling should return a few copies.

The game is highly extensible and users can modify vehicles, add and make maps (some available ones are real-life, such as one of the Boston metropolitan area or of the UK) and add new types of vehicles. These modifications and maps are on the OpenTTD Forum.

The default vehicles are planes, helicopters, hovercraft, ships, trucks, buses, railways, electric railways, monorail and MagLev train. The vehicles available, and the models of them, vary as the game progresses – you obviously can’t have a supersonic jet in 1950!

OpenTTD can also be played multiplayer over a LAN or Internet. This is a nice thing to play with a friend whilst bored.

The game isn’t very challenging; you can easily go from a balance of -€200,000 to hundreds of millions in green figures in about 50 in-game years. Yet, it remains fun. Online gaming is much more challenging.

It can be played on all major operating systems and developmental ports exist for portable devices like PocketPCs and Nintendo DSs!

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It decodes neural signals into unique commands that are used to interact with the computer. I found a video on Youtube that was taken on the CEBIT 2007 (a year ago) were someone was playing an ego shooter with a mouse and the OCZ Actuator. He did not have to press buttons to shoot, he did not have to press the forward key to move, all he needed the mouse for was to look around.

That’s a whole new level of gaming in my opinion. OCZ will be present on this years Cebit again which takes place from March 4th to 9th in Hannover, Germany. The release date (planned) for the device is mid 2008.

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