“Natal is a wonderful additive to this experience. It really does add to the “Fable” world,” he insisted. When asked how, Molyneux dodged the question. “I can’t give you specifics about that, but it’s been a real joy to put some Natal stuff in there.” At the same Conference, Molyneux also noted that President Barack Obama was the inspiration for the ruling dynamic featured in the game, and added that “Fable III” features the “British man hug”, as opposed to the full-body American man hug. “Americans really do love a bit of grand,” he commented.

Moving swiftly on, Molyneux also took the opportunity to announce the casting of John Cleese in “Fable III”. The legendary British comic will be providing the voice for the main character’s butler, a kind of cross between Alfred from “Batman” and Jeeves from the famous PG Woodhouse stories. “We were inspired by the idea that people kept saying we were making this game with “Monty Python”-esque humour,” he noted, “so we got John Cleese as your butler. We have recorded a vast amount of AI dialogue and having John Cleese big you up in a slightly sarcastic way is absolutely wonderful. He is an absolutely fantastic character.”

Speaking to computerandvideogames.com, Greenberg declared that “We obviously could have done a motion controller if we’d have wanted to do that, but we felt that would be a much more interruptive experience. We had an opportunity here to really do something that’s transformative and brings a whole new category of experiences. Now we’re saying to creators, “We can see when you move your hand, when you move your feet, we can track your body. I can stand in front of this sensor and it can recognise my face and know if it’s me, or my brother or my sister.”

Greenberg goes on to predict that Natal and the games it influences will be around for some considerable time to come, and that its impact on the industry as a whole will be a profound one. “The richness of the technology is really going to enable experiences that never had existed before,” he claims. “And we’re not just speaking about what we’re doing this year, but I think two, three, four, five years from now as this evolves… This is just the beginning of something that will change the way consumers interact with entertainment and change (the) way our publishing partners think about game development.”

Speaking to techradar.com, Cooper says that the device marks a “paradigm shift” in the way games will be played from hereon in. “Perhaps the most crucial factor to a paradigm shift in new motion control schemes are whether all audiences accept it to ensure profitability,” he states. “The game controller has been and still is the accepted input amongst core gaming audiences, so we need to ensure they accept these new forms of input too. Microsoft has iterated on Nintendo’s offering with Project Natal in introducing a paradigm shift, and Ubisoft is supporting Natal with over ten projects in development.”

Cooper is not alone in his belief, either, with gaming analyst Steve Bailey, of Screen Digest, in full agreement with him, albeit with the caveat that, “How far (motion control) progresses will, as always, come down to sufficiently innovative software rather than any wishful thinking on behalf of the industry itself (and that innovation will, increasingly crucially, be a function of device AND service, rather than simply the former.” Bailey also believes that “We’ll continue to see elements of gaming, especially the ideas of “comfort food” mechanics, creeping into our lives, and arguably for the better, via what we currently see as wellness gaming and lifestyle management. Anyone who gripes about this being ‘a bit like “The Matrix”’ will seem as fusty and unwilling as any parent who ever failed to get to grips with a TV remote.”

The patent apparently includes a plan to “lock out” gamers who do not correspond to the company’s idea of “health” as well as plans to invade privacy further by using Project Natal to extend the physical assessment “to psychological traits associated with the physical person, including intelligence, physical beliefs, political affiliations and hobbies that reflect the rendering of an avatar.” The bizarre, and in some ways really rather alarming patent also suggests that Natal will be used in helping with determining an individual’s mental health or mood – “stress could be detected to gauge honesty”, says the application, and “as another example, skin resistance, pulse and breathing could be detected to gauge mood.” Microsoft insists that the plan to move away from self defined avatars – which they admit allow people “to overcome shortcomings that would otherwise inhabit them, such as pertaining to self-consciousness” – to ones practically forced upon them, is for those who would rather have “the cues that are available in meeting someone in person… to meet and become acquainted with particular types of people.”

News of the application has bewildered and seriously angered gamers, if the comments section on GameSpot.com is anything to go by, with user thedarklinglord succinctly summing up the mood by saying “I really hope whoever thought obtrusively prying into people’s lives and attempting to dictate lifestyle changes was a good idea gets a nice unemployment slip for Christmas. Or a baseball bat upside the skull.”

In an interview with OXM, Epic Games’ Vice President Mark Rein said that the company intends to make sure that all of their future games for the Xbox 360 will support the new hardware. “We always want to have something that exploits the unique capabilities of a platform,” Rein acknowledged, saying that “We’re just sitting down with (Natal) in the next two weeks, I think, to have a look… I have no idea what we’re going to do from a game standpoint, but from an engine standpoint, it’s definitely cool stuff and we will support it.”

He goes even further than that, however, adding “I think any future Xbox games we make will have some Natal support,” noting that he doubts that Epic Games will be alone in that stance. “I think everyone will do something that exploits Natal once it’s out there and everyone has it,” he conceded. “So will people be able to benefit from it? Yes. And then if they want to make that “oh my God” really cool Natal experience, well, we got the engine for that. I’m pretty psyched about it.” Epic Games has been one of the staunchest supporters of the Xbox 360 with from the “Gears of War” series to “Unreal” and more, so their decision to fully commit to Natal is perhaps no surprise. “What Microsoft has done is very sophisticated,” Rein insisted. “It’s very cool.”

“I had to restrain myself from telling everyone I met,” Kojima says of his reaction to first sampling the Natal device, which he says is akin to the jump from 2D to 3D graphics in terms of its inevitable seismic impact on the industry. “This technology surpasses anything we have at the same time as treasuring the current tradition,” he says.

“We don’t have to throw away the technologies we’ve built on. We can add to them… I see the potential of Natal, and it’s not just a traditional fad.” Kojima and Inafune both agree that the impact of Natal is going to be almost like science fiction to some people, and will forever change the ways in which people interact with their computer, and not just in terms of video games.

“Remember the film “Back to the Future”?” Nagoshi asked the audience. “Well, we’re very close to that future right now.” “We have to be role models with Natal and act responsibly,” says Nagashi. “We can lead people and show them the potential of Natal. We are serious people, and we can lead the rest of the world to this new technology.”