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At an event in the UK yesterday, EA Sports head honcho Peter Moore outright refuted any possibility of his division at EA developing sports games with 3D technology in mind. In speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, the affable exec states, "Believe me, there's nothing going on right now that would say I'm ready to demo a 3D sports game." That said, on the subject of Project Natal and the Sony Motion Controller, Moore opened up to many more possibilities. "We're getting in sync with Sony's motion controller and Project Natal with what Sony and Microsoft want to do with their publishing partners, so stay tuned for further information on that as we get closer to the date." When pressed for dates on either project, though, he remained cagey, saying "I do not know when they're launching ... certainly Sony has made no public pronouncement at all, and Microsoft has said 'holiday', which obviously gives fudge room." So! Madden Natal: confirmed? Not quite. The exec does note that "core intellectual property" would be heading up the motion charge "in some shape of fashion on those platforms." And considering Moore has already confirmed a version of EA Sports Active for Natal, we have to imagine (and hope) that he has more of that kind of thing in mind.

Sony and Microsoft will go head-to-head with new control schemes.

Arkedo Studio, the French developer responsible for the DS's Big Bang Mini and Nervous Brickdown, as well as recent Xbox Live Indie Games like the stylish 03 Pixel, has been thinking about Project Natal. And sadly for us, it decided to think again before going through with its proposed game idea, 2-Finger Heroes. CEO Camille Guermonprez posted mocked-up screenshots and design plans for the game on NeoGAF, revealing a brawler controlled by players' fingers acting as the protagonists' legs. Occasionally, the game would switch over to segments controlled by hand motions or crossed arms, and award powerups for hand gestures at certain segments (with a penalty for flipping the screen off!) Why isn't Arkedo working on this game right now? Issues with recognition of minute finger movements -- and localization concerns. "Yup, what can be understood as the victory sign in France, could be a terrible insult in the UK, for instance," Guermonprez said. "And we are not even talking about Italian. Oh, the possibilities..."

Arkedo Studio, the French developer responsible for the DS's Big Bang Mini and Nervous Brickdown, as well as recent Xbox Live Indie Games like the stylish 03 Pixel, has been thinking about Project Natal. And sadly for us, it decided to think again before going through with its proposed game idea, Two-Finger Heroes. CEO Camille Guermonprez posted mocked-up screenshots and design plans for the game on NeoGAF, revealing a brawler controlled by players' fingers acting as the protagonists' legs. Occasionally, the game would switch over to segments controlled by hand motions or crossed arms, and award powerups for hand gestures at certain segments (with a penalty for flipping the screen off!) Why isn't Arkedo working on this game right now? Issues with recognition of minute finger movements -- and localization concerns. "Yup, what can be understood as the victory sign in France, could be a terrible insult in the UK, for instance," Guermonprez said. "And we are not even talking about Italian. Oh, the possibilities..."

Speaking to Eurogamer, Microsoft Game Studios head Phil Spencer responded to criticism that Microsoft takes fewer risks than Sony in first-party development by referencing Project Natal -- "if there isn't risk in Natal then I don't know what's keeping me up at night." "We're trying to build a set of new games, new experiences that will have the same quality metrics of our past games," he said, "but really entice both existing 360 customers and new people. It's a huge challenge, a huge investment and it's fraught with risk." Much as he did in our interview, Spencer equated Natal integration with Live integration, suggesting that it will eventually be ubiquitous. "At the beginning of Live it was all about sports, racing and shooting games," Spencer said. "Now if you found a game that didn't have some kind of Live functionality it would seem like it wasn't a complete game. I think Natal is likely to get there as well." That is somewhat at odds with Aaron Greenberg's statement that Natal games would be almost entirely "completely unique, brand-new experiences." And, as a bonus, he also found time to make one wacky statement about Peter Molyneux. "Haha! Working with Peter is amazing, he's a very creative, inspirational person. Sometimes it's like riding a bull with no saddle, and sometimes it's like reading a great novel, but it's a fun experience." Look for Peter Molyneux's Literodeo among the Project Natal launch lineup.

It may not be the most shocking turn of events, but we would be remiss not point out that Turn 10 -- the studio behind the Forza Motorsport series -- is dabbling in Natal development. The evidence comes by way of a Turn 10 job listing for a business development manager. The listing, discovered by Total Video Games, is looking for someone to "set strategy and drive high quality game content for our Next Generation games including the NATAL platform." Considering that Forza Motorsport series is the only product that Turn 10 has created for Microsoft thus far, it's probably safe to assume Natal support will work its way into future iterations of the series. Microsoft has already proven that Natal can be utilized in driving games with its Burnout Paradise demo, though its hard to imagine the motion capture peripheral will have the precision for something as technical as Forza. But who says Natal has to be used for steering? It could be used for secondary activities like shifting, changing the radio station or, most obviously, flipping the bird. We're sure Xbox Live members would just love it. [Via G4tv]

According to an anonymous source speaking to VG247, the PlayStation Motion Controller will officially be called "Arc" by the time it launches. It was previously codenamed "Gem," with rumors also dubbing it "Sphere" at one stage. As expected, Sony declined to comment on the story. You know what, Sony? Stop it. You may think you're building suspense here, but all you're doing is creating a lot of work for bloggers who'll have to go back and re-tag all these posts when you reveal the real name. Oh, don't you skulk away, Microsoft, we're including you on this too. If it's Natal, fine, if not, just pick something already. Both of you. Now. Choose. Go ahead. We'll wait. Hello?

We became considerably more concerned about Project Natal's future when we learned it would be pulling its processing power from the 360 and it would seem that the development community is similarly conflicted. In a feature by Develop, probably the most important party in the peripheral's success, the developers, weighed in on the device with a mixed bag of concern and enthusiasm. Though there was a good amount of positivity and skepticism, the overwhelming sentiment is in line with Weaseltron director Adrian Hirst's wait-and-see attitude: "Microsoft need to start showing some real killer games/applications for Natal before people really start getting interested in it as a platform." So, here's your chance: What's your Natal prediction?

Microsoft's magic box does a lot more than you might think.

Over the course of this year's CES, it was easy to get swept up in the fervor around 3D technology. Not Microsoft's Xbox team lead Aaron Greenberg though -- in speaking with G4TV, Greenberg said he thinks "there's a lot of challenges about 3D in the living room." To Greenberg, it's not a question of technology (or lack thereof) that's holding back 3D, it's the home environment. "I don't know about you, but when I play games or watch TV, I've got my phone, I've got all kinds of things going on. I get up, I get down, I'm looking outside at the weather and it's ... I'm not in a dark theater, wearing glasses, staring at a screen. I think it's just a different environment." This isn't to say Microsoft isn't flexible when it comes to consumer demand -- quite the contrary! "As consumer interest for 3D grows, we'll grow with it," Greenberg admitted. "I think right now we're unsure what level of interest there is from consumers to really want a 3D experience in the living room." Currently, only Avatar and upcoming XBLA racer Scrap Metal support 3D on Microsoft's console. "If it becomes really important and people want to do more with it, we're absolutely happy to support it," Greenberg assured. Of course, with plenty of resources currently invested in the development and launch of Project Natal and its motion-based technology, Microsoft certainly has incentive to keep interest in 3D at arm's length.

Capcom informed G4 at CES that it's certainly working on "stuff" for Microsoft's Project Natal, including a "brand we haven't seen in a while." The publisher's VP of strategic planning and business development, Christian Svensson, explained that it's creating something "from the ground up for Natal." As he put it, "We're not looking at Natal as 'okay, here's a little Natal gimmick that we've worked into some existing game.'" Svensson added that Keiji Inafune, Mega Man's papa and head of R&D at Capcom, is "really excited" about working with the peripheral (as demonstrated during Tokyo Game Show's Xbox 360 Creator Panel). Not that Capcom is planning to rush the process, mind you. "We're gonna cook something and it's gonna to take a while to cook."

Filed under: Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360 Vaunted science magazine Popular Science got to check out Project Natal at CES, and has posted its own take on the project over on its site. While most of the coverage we've seen of Microsoft's motion controller has been from the gaming press, Pop Sci comes at it from a software engineering perspective. Essentially, Microsoft is trying to build a sophisticated AI that can look at video of what you're doing in front of a camera, and translate that to information the game can use. To accomplish that, the coders behind Natal took lots and lots of reference pictures and videos, and they're still "teaching" the software what it looks like when you try to hit a soccer ball or wave at Milo. It's fascinating stuff -- thirty "guesses" per second at your body's location and movement based on what the computer "knows" about what bodies look like and how they move, and lots of calculations based on that data. Hopefully by the time it's supposed to release later this year, Natal will have figured out what it looks like when we melee with a battle rifle. [Thanks, Wonderflex!]

In an interview with Financial Post, Microsoft president of entertainment and devices Robbie Bach said "something like 70% or 80% of the publishers in the world" are already working on Natal-based games. The interview followed Microsoft's CES 2010 keynote during which Bach announced the hands-free controller for the Xbox 360 would launch during the 2010 holiday season. Bach also respectfully outlined what he believes is the major difference between Microsoft and Nintendo's respective business models: third-party success. "Our model is certainly about third-party publishers making money. We design our system for third-party publishers," he told the Canadian news outlet. "[Nintendo makes] most of their money through first-party games that Nintendo produces. That's absolutely their business model. And it's a great business model, it's just different, but it makes it hard for third-party publishers." As for upcoming Natal-based games, Bach said Microsoft's first-party developers are focused on the hardware to help lead other developers down an "innovative" path. "We want to have a few titles from Microsoft that show the way and then we want the breadth and power of the ecosystem from our partners to bring lots of new ideas, new innovations, new concepts to the marketplace." Microsoft's Project Natal appears to be a direct response to a mainstream audience that has turned to Nintendo's hardware when spending disposable income. Considering the Xbox 360 and PS3 have effectively cracked the third-party code, Microsoft's focus continues to be set on capturing a demographic that may feel intimidated by the hardware and its core (read: jerkface) players.

With the news that Project Natal would offload the image processing to the Xbox console - as opposed to handling those duties in hardware on the device itself - and consume as much as 10 to 15 percent of the console's overall "computing resources," we became concerned that the potential for "supplemental" input in core games would be blunted. When asked what percentage of the Project Natal-enabled games in development would be Natal-exclusive as opposed to Natal-enhanced titles, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg told Joystiq, "Our focus is on most if not all them will fall into that category of completely unique, brand-new experiences for Natal." "We're going to manage the portfolio very carefully and our focus is going to be on bringing completely brand new original experiences to the market when we launch Natal," Greenberg said. "We're not looking at just adding little Natal components to games, we're looking at how do we actually bring an entirely new category of controller-free games and entertainment to the market so I think that's where we will continue to focus." But that doesn't mean that other developers aren't able to supplement their game's input with Natal controls. After the release this holiday, "developers will have that out there at their fingertips if they want to enable those features," Greenberg told us. "But I can't speak to what that means from a game development standpoint. As far as I'm aware, there's no real sacrifice." But Greenberg wasn't just talking up "new games" and "new ways to navigate" the console, but Microsoft is mysteriously promising "new entertainment-like experiences that will be enabled" because of the new interface. With the "focus" on "controller-free games" and not just adding "little Natal components to games" we're left wondering how Peter Molyneux's Fable 3 - which he confirmed will have Natal support - will implement that support. With a 2010 launch for both Fable 3 and Project Natal, we expect it will be one of the device's bellwether games.

Discussing specifics of the company's forthcoming Project Natal, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg told Joystiq, "We think that there will be millions of Natals in consumer's homes this holiday." To put that number into context, Microsoft sold 2.3m Xbox 360 consoles and Nintendo sold 1.7m copies of Wii Fit with bundled Balance Board in the US during the months of November and December, 2008. "Millions" of Natal units in a single holiday season is certainly an ambitious goal and one usually out of reach of most video game peripherals; however, Project Natal will be released with more than a year of hype behind it, not unlike the highly anticipated Wii Fit. With more than 39 million Xboxes worldwide, there's certainly a large enough platform footprint, and Greenberg (re)assures us that Project Natal will work on every Xbox 360 released to date, whether a hard drive is present or not. "As far as I'm aware, there is no requirement for a hard drive," Greenberg said. There is a 50mb software package that powers some of Natal's magic, which raises concerns that original Xbox 360 Arcade units wouldn't have the storage availability to use Natal. Greenberg assuaged our concerns, reminding us of Microsoft's NXE outreach, offering a free 512mb Memory Unit or a discounted hard drive. "It's kind of like the digital TV conversion you know, [subsidizing] the box," Greenberg said. "We did that with the New Xbox Experience because it did require some space and so we feel like now we're in an environment where we feel like we're fine."

A few details about Project Natal's technical capabilities slipped out alongside the holiday 2010 release window at Microsoft's CES press conference. The most revealing of these specifics is that the hardware will only siphon 10 to 15 percent of the 360's computing resources, according to a statement from Natal lead developer Alex Kipman. "Natal has to work on the existing hardware without taking too much hardware processing away from the games developers," Kipman added. However, according to a report obtained by GamesIndustry, the processing power could have been further reduced. The original build for Natal included a chip that processed the "bone system," assumed responsible for creating a skeleton of the player in front of the device's glossy eye. However, in an attempt to lower costs, the chip was removed from the device's final build, putting that processing onus on the software that will utilize Natal. In other words, it's extremely unlikely that any software will be able to have Natal support patched into it -- a fact that Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter says could help "serve to focus developers on Natal-specific concepts as opposed to revisiting old classics." Update: Updated language to reflect that of the original source -- Natal will use 10 - 15 percent of the 360's overall computing power, not just its CPU.

Report says Microsoft has removed internal processing chip.

Don't look for an Xbox 720 anytime soon.

Over 70 percent of publishers now creating Natal-based titles.

Project Natal gets a release date and Xbox 360 users get something to anticipate in the second half of this CES 2010 keynote.

The mouse freed us from the arrow key; how will the NUI conquer the Z-axis?

PhD.'s and developers like Peter Molyneux alike weigh in what we can expect from Project Natal the motion control via camera, set to launch in 2010.

Microsoft teases the CES crowd with a new trailer.

Hardware stats revealed at keynote address.

According to a press release summing up Microsoft's CES 2010 keynote that dropped just before Ballmer took the stage, the company will be releasing Project Natal in "holiday season 2010." We heard earlier today about what year the future controller would be arriving, but now, folks, now we know during which group of months it'll be arriving at retail. The release explicitly states that the still-codenamed Natal project is "scheduled to be available in holiday season 2010," adding that Natal "is only the most recent example of Microsoft's work creating natural user interfaces." With any luck, by E3 we'll have an actual name and maybe even a specific month for when we'll get to check it out at home! Until then, we'll have to get by with the inspirational video about Natal's origins created for today's release, embedded above.

Hands-free gaming coming by the end of the year.

If your interest in all things Microsoft extends to a barely gaming related keynote address, then we've got some good news. Major Nelson tipped us off that Microsoft will be streaming its 2010 Consumer Electronic Show keynote -- hosted by the zany Steve Ballmer and and Robbie Bach -- tonight at 9:30PM EST. Sadly, tonight's viewing has been sullied by the fact that we pretty much know what we're going to hear in the way of Xbox news. But, like our marathon sessions of Titanic, we won't let our prior knowledge ruin our enjoyment of tonight's big show. Also, the fine folks at Engadget will be liveblogging the entire event, if you'd prefer to read about all the excitement. Get some popcorn ready, and let's hope for more of this... oh, and this. Source: Watch Microsoft's CES 2010 keynote live, at 9:30PM

[Update, 5:30pm: And off comes the rumor tag! Microsoft may have pulled the post but the original video is still live on their own servers, which you can find right here! We'll scrub through it for more information.] Microsoft's Channel 9 developer community site accidentally posted a video interview with Robbie Bach, President of the Entertainment & Devices Division, several hours before the company's annual CES press conference. Initially tweeted by @ch9, the video was pulled, as evidenced by this tweet from none other than @microsoft: "Sorry, spoke too soon, or, tweeted too soon. This video later tonight." A vigilant tipster wrote us just after the video was pulled, giving us a quick breakdown. "Go to the 11:53 mark in the video to hear them start discussing Game Room," our tipster writes. "They aren't totally concrete on the details, but they talk about how this is supposed to bring back that retro fun to gaming." That sounds an awful lot like that consumer survey we spotted in October for a virtual Avatar arcade, one of the potential titles of which was "Game Room." You don't say ... Our tipster also unsurprisingly reports, "In the video they confirm Natal is on for this year." Considering everyone from Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot to Microsoft's own Steve Ballmer have alluded to a 2010 release, we're not the least bit surprised. But if they're still calling it Project Natal in this video, that means we're probably looking to E3 for an official reveal, with branding and all. Microsoft's CES keynote begins at 9:30pm Eastern and we'll be delivering all the news straight from Las Vegas.

Speaking to Develop, Traveller's Tales director Jon Burton voiced concerns about Microsoft's motion control solution, Project Natal. Specifically, Burton stated that Natal's lack of controller input as well as input lag could limit the kinds of games made for it, though he did admit that the device is "exceedingly clever." Burton prefers Sony's motion controller, noting that it will be "cheap, accurate and will put buttons at your fingertips," which should make it suitable for a wide range of games. Still, Burton admits he was "stunned" by the technical wizardry of Natal. With the experience of having his own motion capture studio at TT, Burton states that getting "anything resembling mo-cap" in real-time from a single camera is "nothing short of amazing." For what it's worth, Burton has not used a final version of the device. We noted Natal's input lag when we tried it at TGS earlier this year, where Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda assured us the final product would iron out, or at least ameliorate, the issue.

Microsoft's taken steps to appeal to the casual crowd, sure. The first was NXE, which brought us all things like Avatars and Netflix, with subsequent updates adding Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm. These are experiences meant to broaden the appeal of the Xbox 360 to casual gamers, a group that Microsoft spokesperson David Dennis told GI.biz is pretty tricky to hook. Project Natal will play a big part in Microsoft's continuing goal to interest more casual players, Dennis said. He compared the interactive, controller-less experience to having the broad appeal of a title like Wii Fit -- something Dennis calls "an experience done right" that goes beyond the core yet still manages to "capture the imagination of the core." It's this dual-catering that Dennis thinks Natal excel at, as he predicts the hardware will enable experiences that the core will look forward to, as well as "casual game experiences that are easy to jump in and play." In the interim, we offer Microsoft this ProTip for appealing to more casual players: Make more games with "Party" in the title. Who doesn't like a party?