I have to strongly disagree with some of your examples of Microsoft's "failures."

While Vista was, indeed, a marketing disaster, it was and is a solid OS that is vastly better than Apple's marketing, or non-users' rumors would suggest.

I take greater issue with your mention of the Zune, though. The Zune deserves every bit the same credit you serve to the Xbox 360. It's a solid, beautifully-designed, well thought-out piece of hardware, interface, and ecosystem. The Zune Pass has proven, for me, drastically better than using iTunes, both in the software's better design, and in the value it provides. The Zune's interface is extremely intuitive and has proven easier to use than that of the iPod's. And Microsoft's efforts to keep the owners of their older devices in mix by updating their software, as well, has been much more inclusive than Apple's policies. For me it's been far superior to alternatives, and the closes thing I have to a complaint is the fact that the iPod's flooded the market so heavily that it's hard to find any shelf space or dedicated to Zune accessories, or devices designed to interface with anything but an iPod.

Say what you will about the poor market penetration of the items you listed, but don't describe them as though the products, themselves, are examples of screw-ups by Microsoft when they're not. I'll stand by each, and especially my Zune, over alternatives any day.

Note my complete lack of effort to defend PlaysForSure. That had a great deal of wasted potential and turned into a fiasco. I'll agree with you 100% that Microsoft failed on that one.

who ever wrote this must either hate Microsoft or a ps3 fan...

I just read today that one of the game companies has known about project Natal for a year or more. A year?! Only one real game demo (car racing)? This lends credence to the idea that Natal is maybe 50% smoke and mirrors. On the other hand, maybe the 3rd party publishers just don't get it like they didn't get the WiiMote at first.

Natal's motion controller feature is so much that eventually. I can play my games and watch my TV with only the slightest flick of my eyeballs and finger tips.

thule - A Microsoft rep said at E3 that "game companies just got the natal dev kit yesterday"...which means either may 31st or June 1st...I dont remember the exact day he said that.

I dont expect this thing to be out soon, But I do think it will happen.

It will either be in Fall...or the (unfortunately) more likely date is next spring.

murc - It just seemed strange to me that a company that makes games for the 360 and knew about Natal would want to get a piece of the demo action. For them not to have anything makes me think that it is not really ready or no one has figured out a compelling game to make for it. Not only that, but the game will have to be specially coded for Natal. A third party company would have less risk coding for PS3 and Wii MotionPlus because they are more similar in function.

It's not about technology -- it is what will actually make people want to buy a game.

I find it rather interesting that in this article vista is being bashed by the author and not the commentators. Every other article I've come across on this site that the gives vista props is promptly followed by people accusing Dvice of being a Microhound and in their pocket.

There are some really dumb people in here.

Microsoft has only recently finished the new controller. During development of the controller they had to use internal demos to test it and further develop it.

Now that they have a working controller they have provided games companies with development kits so that they can make games for it.
Which means that they are now making games for this new controller.

And I can assure you that games companies don't want to be using unfinished hardware, that is why they weren't given the hardware before it was finished.

PS: Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world, so nobody can say that what they make isn't successful.

The only dump people are people that actually believe everything that Microsoft promises. They can deliver, but it is hit and miss.

I'm saying is that iIf Natal is truly the future of gaming they should have had some real game concepts. Since they didn't have any games, come off as completely worried about Nintendo capturing the hearts and minds of game developers. Microsoft is known for talking about or showing off stuff just to stop people from considering a competitor. When Microsoft finally delivers it is rarely what they promised. Natal is Surface without the table. But where is Surface? It was shown off a long time ago, but where can someone buy the thing? Natal does appear to be much closer to reality than Surface, but where is the beef?

Sony I think is much closer with their controller. It takes much less image processing power. Having a wand in hand is a good thing. You can make a wand with a buttons for triggers and rumble for feedback. Where is the feedback with Natal? It might work, but let's see some real game concepts.

s/dump/dumb/ -- sorry typo.

Oh.... and one more thing. Game controllers need to have LOW latency. Nintendo's solution provides the best response times. Anything with image processing will add latency and destroy the overall user experience.

If you're looking forward to Project Natal, check out http://www.project-natal.com for the latest news around the web.

I love my zune. I have never had any issue with it, not once. Every person I know that has an iPod has atleast one or more likely two or more things they dislike or have had issues with.

Wow, After reading this. I am removing this blog from my RSS reader... TurboFool said it!

Great article nice pro's and cons.

I had to make my first post here. I have sat by and seen some pretty biased articles by Dviceso finally stepping in.

1.) No games produced yet?
Um hello...how many games does the xbox have? I am pretty sure with xbox live and being able to plug it into your computer they could send out a free update to add this controller option into any game they want.

2.) You mention the e-chat dress thing shown as unlikely....hardly...I am sure if you can do web cam and voice over xbox live you could easily do this.

3.) do it the I-pod way? Wtf is that supposed to mean, and FYI its called XNA studio....used to make Xbox games, www.dreamspark.com go download it.

4.) The Nintendo pointer thing that's old school and also has a huge lag time

5.)To many things to consider? To sophisticated? How many things do you do at once with any other controller or PC game? combo moves, looking and moving and shooting, selecting weapons etc etc

6.) Zune is a music player for heaven sakes not a GPS, internet, shopping, mocha making dishes scrubbing robot like an iphone. That's like trying to relate a calculator and a computer.

7.) your main image....just...wtf...

Only thing I could see wrong is the detection...I would imagine that you would still need cameras off to the side or something. However, they wouldn't make a device that couldn't motion detect if that's what it was meant to do (and no saying anything about oh well they make Oses and looking at them).

Ok I'm done with my rant, I feel better

and sometimes it isnt even the console maker's fault. if developers fail to fully use consoles capabilities, the blame sometimes falls to the console. people keep making it sound like it's Nintendo's fault 3rd party games dont do well. im not saying Nin isnt, but one doesnt hear many saying the developers are slacking.

The Vista failure is real. I am an IT tech pro, and until SP1, Vista was almost unusable. Since that time I've upgraded to Win7 RC1, and this is what Vista *should* have been.

Another failure that wasn't mentioned was WebTV for Windows. Actually, we could go all day listing MS' failures. What they excel at is marketing; their non-game software is mediocre most o the time.

@OI: Almost unusable? I'm also an IT professional, and ran Vista exclusively on all of my machines from several days before its release until the 7 beta hit the internet. It ran smoothly, more stably than XP, on equipment notably less-powerful than what the poor reviews claimed was necessary to run Vista well.

Care to step up and state what issues you had with Vista, pre-SP1 (which, in my experience, made no major improvements to an already-stable OS), that made it so unusable, or are you going to stick to the inaccurate generalizations most people make about it?

Only issues I ever found were nVidia's horrific drivers, and its incompatibility with incredibly crappy software. Microsoft's not to blame for that.

As for WebTV, that was trash before Microsoft bought it. Buying it and rebranding it MSNTV didn't help any, but they didn't design that trainwreck.

And care to name companies of comparable size and success that don't have a long track record of failed ideas? You sound like you simply enjoy bashing Microsoft for the sport of it, without any real perspective. That's so '90s.

THANK YOU TURBO! Finally somebody gave a viable and firm reason as to of why they like (or dislike) Vista instead of just saying its garbage or buggy becuase Apple/everyone tells me to or "shut up Vistas awesome cuz Apple?everyone doesn't want you to think it is."

Current using Vista Ultimate SP2....lol SP2 what a joke, I don't see any improvements.

The problems I have with Vista: when the menu bar to burn or play music in my computer, those icons come and go as they please, very annoying. On top of that the folder views change automatically every 5 seconds. Those are the only 2 really annoying things...oh..and the crappy search feature.

@OI: I don't care what MS has failed at and hasn't the point of my comments was that Dvice reviewed a product that isn't even out without knowing 100% of the facts and just making biased assumptions (if you haven't noticed they tend to be PS and ipod/phone fan bois)

looks great. but what happens when the lighting changes or someone walks behind the player or any other number of things.

sony tried this on the ps2 with the eyetoy, and again with the ps3 and the playstation eye.

granted, microsoft's tech is probably beyond those efforts, but do you think that maybe there is a reason sony moved away from that model?

@Provider 2: It's completely unaffected by the lights changing. Read any of the first-hand reports, and they pretty much all mention them consistently turning the lights on and off mid-demo to show how the game was unaffected by it. One of the cameras is infrared, which explains this.

As for people walking behind the player, also noted in most reviews is the fact that it can easily track MULTIPLE people at once. Multiplayer is a strong possibility, but also frequently during the demos the Microsoft people would walk in to demonstrate or take over, and the game always ignored and/or compensated appropriately.

Microsoft's aware of the failures of all previous methods. They knew that if they brought to market something that didn't resolve those issues, they'd make fools of themselves, and kill any future opportunities with it. They've been working on this, and related technologies, for many years. They didn't bother to release or unveil the technology until it was finally ready for primetime. While there are likely to be limitations we're not yet expecting, and developers who use it poorly, the base technology is all solid and will meet the basic expectations Microsoft's laid out for us.

@Provider 2

Tracking is done by infrared so lighting is not an issue, pitch black or bright light, it'll work.

Each person is tracked as seperate entities and so do not interfere should you go in front of someone. :)

I think this tech is awesome, but the demo is too cinematographic, I seriously doubt the speech recognition engine can get multiple people screaming their responses and the girl trying clothes on the screen...

Lets see what happens, I saw a live demo on youtube and wasn't as amazing as the video is being commented in here.

i can think of some older games this system might revitalize. namely:
mechwarrior- no kebord to memorize just move and shoot and explode
donkey kong- bring your own hammer
metroid- just insane that its my favorit game and you can be a hot cybornetic babe and kick but.
thats just off my head anyone else think of some cool games this would rock with

Microsoft is a software company. Their hardware history had mixed results. The Xbox 360 is superior because it uses a three-core PowerPC prcessor made by IBM, and originaly designed by Apple, IBM and Motorola. Apple is losing their top brand positions by switching over to the cheaper and hackable Intel Pentium instead of staying with the PowerPC.

But without a good support, Microsoft will keep a .500 batting average with their hardware products. I will not write what I believe about their software. There are plenty of other here that can complement or complain about the software products.

Typical of all places on the internet these days, As soon as someone is critical of either MS or Sony, you get people crying because of it. What you read here was possible ways it could be screwed up, real ways in which it could be screwed up. You guys need to chill out, It's like he attacked a member of your family with his possible negative out comes.

This is just the next step toward virtual reality gaming. Combine this with the Wii wand and that will be the next step. Just need better visual and other feedback.

Wheatie,

I think what you describe is what Sony demoed at E3. The camera and the wand/controller.

Not to turn this into a Vista forum, but I am also an IT professional and have some thoughts on this. First, I don't think it is fair to say Vista is a failure. The company was driven to provide a higher security to the OS and that's where most of the complaints come from. However, they do claim that the OS is easier to use. That is nonsense. You pretty much have to be an IT professional to get it to run with your older programs and hardware--it doesn't mean the programs were crappy, it means the OS is not very friendly with them. Usually, the trick is to run them as administrator, but I've had to jump through so many hoops on some of them, it is hardly worth it. I find the search function great. Windows 7 looks more promising to address some of the irratability issues. I agree, I think Vista is more stable than XP, but XP is a highly stable OS as well...usually it is hardware drivers that cause problems. Now for the actual topic, I do think this and Wii type gaming interaction is the current wave of the future for gaming. It is just a small step getting closer to virtual reality -- now that's what I'm waiting for.

"company's checkered past (the Xbox 360 being a very relevant exception)"
What universe are you people living in?
The 360 failure rate alone should have people in a class action lawsuit towards Microsoft for putting out a defective product!
We have had three 360 consoles so far, only the exculsive games keep us with Microsoft.

Of all the people in the world why would YOU guys be saying some new tech in unproven and untested? You are the ones doing advertizing for the Kindle.That failure is destined to turn into a brick the first time someone drops it or it gets a virus. This thing looks cool and seems to be something new that could get the entire family involved and exercizing more than the Wii. If you have to be doing full body movements and it is compatible with multiple technologies, why not give it a chance?

@TurboFool

You can't be serious about Vista being a solid OS? You are more of a fool than your name lets on. I purchased a dell laptop and that was all they would let me have was Vista. It was the biggest piece of eye candy crap that ever spoiled hardware.

I really tried to use it but Vista SUCKS! on so many levels. I only lasted months on it, a very valiant attempt on my part, and now I am back to Linux on my laptop. Another thing, my Linux machines have been running 64bit Linux for years, something MS can't seem to get. I know they have something in 64bits now but I still hear that it SUCKS! I can't waste my time with it just yet. Been burned too many times by MS in the past.

The Apple is running Free BSD I think. Free BSD has been around a lot longer than Linux and way more stable than any other OS out there. That is what I hear anyway. I am not a BSD user but a Linux user. Using that as my reference for Free BSD, it must really be a stable OS.

So it sounds like your experience is limited to MS stuff. You need to see what you are missing before you start slamming other OSes. MS is really the bottom of the barrel. They just have better marketing.

I do own and Xbox and I like to play it once in a while but I would never like to rely on it for anything important. I do hope this controller is more than just techno masturbation. If this hits the markets and it actually works, I will have one for sure. It is just that MS products never actually work as advertised. I think MS spends more money on advertising than actually fixing anything. I have been burned sooo many times by MS.

@TurboFool

You can't be serious about Vista being a solid OS? You are more of a fool than your name lets on. I purchased a dell laptop and that was all they would let me have was Vista. It was the biggest piece of eye candy crap that ever spoiled hardware.

I really tried to use it but Vista SUCKS! on so many levels. I only lasted months on it, a very valiant attempt on my part, and now I am back to Linux on my laptop. Another thing, my Linux machines have been running 64bit Linux for years, something MS can't seem to get. I know they have something in 64bits now but I still hear that it SUCKS! I can't waste my time with it just yet. Been burned too many times by MS in the past.

The Apple is running Free BSD I think. Free BSD has been around a lot longer than Linux and way more stable than any other OS out there. That is what I hear anyway. I am not a BSD user but a Linux user. Using that as my reference for Free BSD, it must really be a stable OS.

So it sounds like your experience is limited to MS stuff. You need to see what you are missing before you start slamming other OSes. MS is really the bottom of the barrel. They just have better marketing.

I do own and Xbox and I like to play it once in a while but I would never like to rely on it for anything important. I do hope this controller is more than just techno masturbation. If this hits the markets and it actually works, I will have one for sure. It is just that MS products never actually work as advertised. I think MS spends more money on advertising than actually fixing anything. I have been burned sooo many times by MS.

If they will develop games for it like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, then I'm all for it. Who would want to hit a bunch of buttons to use the force or wield the light saber when you can do all of it with just your hands and movement? For example you are in the middle of a battle and you are being overwhelmed so you throw out your hand and force push some of your enemies back. This is just 1 game example where this technology would thrive. Think of all the rest of the games out there where you can really immerse the "user" into the game. Then take a broader look. What about using it beyond just games and move it into fitness and martial arts? Imagine being able to teach someone self defense on their 360. Yeah I know I'm thinking big. But the possibilities are endless. If Lionhead can make a character that's completely interactive just for entertainment, why not expand on it? Why not use it as an interface for scientific study and research? I mean there are people out there daisy chaining PS3's together to make super computers so why not do the same thing but make an interactive character...something you can bounce ideas off of...that has the programming to calculate complex equations.

Project Natal is NOT the future of gaming. I know around 20 gamers, at least 4 would be considered "serious gamers," and none of us wants to fully give up the hand held controller interface.

As for how microsoft can screw it up, they can screw it up the same way they screw up just about everything else they make.

Let's not forget that XBOX 360 and the steering wheel the made all had problems so I wouldn't plan on this thing lasting any length of time.

ok i'll bite. i've had a chance to demo something similar at a best buys tech show and yeah i love the concept. i didnt think it would be ready for another 5 years but if anyone can push it microsoft can.
however my 360 is a brick, 2 red rings and a wiped hard drive later i finally went with sony's ps3. i use the 360 now just to download demos nothing else. my first xbox still runs solid with my nephew playing more than i do which is cool. i aint getting rid of it still has a lot of solid games.
if this motion system works, and is feasible ie under 500- i'll pick it up. but i do hope microsoft fixes the bugs this time before racing to beat sony or anyone else to the floor. a quality system is 10x better than being the 1st out the door.

It sounds like a lot of you are giving this author a whole bunch of trouble for disagreeing on you with some Microsoft. I mean here at dvice I think they give a lot of crap not only to Microsoft, but Apple,Google,and pretty much all of the major companies now on the market. I do think Microsoft has taken some wrong turns with their products lately, (Vista, Zune), but at the same time they do have some very interesting and some maybe successful products coming their way, (Windows 7, Xbox 360, and even Natal). But right I just don't know, (or anyone that matter), how Natal is going to turn out.

"while Vista was, indeed, a marketing disaster, it was and is a solid OS that is vastly better than Apple's marketing, or non-users' rumors would suggest" - Microsoft develops some rather good software, but they can not market it correctly. Infact the issues that Microsoft face our that of a lack of consideration for users, and quiet frankly the worst marketing ideas possible - Windows 7 party anyone? lol

xbox sucks you stupid idiots either pay 500 for a ps3 or 700 for project anal