While Microsoft has held steadfast that they Project Natal has been an in-house design regarding most of the device, most people have assumed they have been getting some help from somewhere. Today it was announced that a company called PrimeSense has indeed had a hand in some of the 3D-motion sensing technology that will be featured in Microsoft’s entry into the motion-interface space.

“Xbox 360 Hardware Engineering teams developed the ‘Project Natal’ sensor based on the PrimeSensor reference design to support the special requirements of Project Natal,” said Aviad Maizels, PrimeSense president and founder.

Joystiq got a statement from Microsoft saying the following:

Microsoft’s product manager for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, Aaron Greenberg, dropped us a line to further explain the Microsoft-PrimeSense partnership where Project Natal is concerned. “Regarding your question, this was primarily a hardware partner announce,” Greenberg said. “Bottom line, we’ve worked closely with PrimeSense to design the best 3D-sensing technology component for ‘Project Natal.’ Microsoft is fully responsible for the design and development of the ‘Project Natal’ sensor, including its depth sensor, RGB camera, multi-array microphone and software.”

Of course the above video shows a lot of concept ideas that would require the coordination of many different companies (Phone company unless MS is going to start touting the XBox as a general communications device, possibly a cable provider, movie distributers to make “clickable” movies) to make them happen. So I wouldn’t hold your breath if you expect Natal is going to do all that right out of the box. And while the possibilities do seem like they could be pretty cool, do I really want to watch a movie with someone that’s going to stop it every two seconds to get location and actor info? But I digress, we will hopefully get even more concrete details regarding Natal’s capabilities as we get closer to E3.

Via Joystiq