Joystiq is reporting that a Sonic The Hedgehog hoverboard(?)game for Xbox Live Arcade will be for Project Natal. It sounds a lot like a Mario Kart sort of thing where you pick up weapons and powerups. The catch? You control the game with your body. You know, because of Natal? Anyways, I will end this post like I will end most posts for the next week or so. We will surely know more at E3.

According to Edge, Project Natal is going to cost $149 all by it’s lonesome or with an Xbox 360 Arcade for $299. That means it’s $99 that way.

Bullshot! is:

• Host: James Plachy
• Color Commentator: Brendan “Fish” Saricks
• Voice of Reason: Eli Hodapp from Toucharcade.com and EGM

There is no knowledge ore below this line. Remember that.

That’s right everyone, Project Natal might be white! I guess it makes sense since the majority of Xbox 360 owners have a white Xbox 360, actually I don’t know if that’s true and the more I think about it most people I know have black ones. Heck, I have a red one. So either Natal is going to come in your choice of black or white or this is just another concept unit and we don’t know anything yet.

Oh have I mentioned it’s going to cost $200? Kotaku has an article about a Swedish retailer listing Natal on their site for pre-order and it costing two hundred smackers. That’s a bit more than the under $100 that had been rumored. Of course EVERYTHING in this post should be considered rumor and hearsay since nothing has been confirmed by Microsoft and probably wont be until E3. Which, is only a month away. So let’s all calm down, ok?

Via Kotaku

Microsoft and Viacom have teamed up to present Microsoft’s two, yes two E3 press conferences commercial free on it’s channels. On June 14th Microsoft’s E3 Media Briefing will air on Spike TV at 1:30pm EST. Then on June 15th at 3:30pm EST MTV will air Microsoft’s big Project Natal reveal conference “as imagined by Cirque Du Soleil”. I really didn’t make that last part up Cirque Du Soleil is really going to be there. Microsoft is so excited about introducing the world to Project Natal that it will then repeat that special at 9pm EST on MTVU, Nick at Nite, MTV Hits, and Logo.

While it would have been great to have all the E3 coverage on G4 we understand that this is a big year for Microsoft and really only those with deep digital cable or satellite packages get G4. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t get Spike TV or MTV. Well besides my parents who don’t even get cable. Either way I’m psyched to report on another E3, last year’s E3 was our first day as a site, remember?

Syed Bilal Tariq is Microsoft’s marketing man in Saudi Arabia and so it’s probably not a big surprise that he was being interviewed on Saudi television. What was kind of surprising was his casual mentioning of October being the month of release for Project Natal. We’ve seen October being talked about as the release window for Natal for a few months now but never by a Microsoft employee. So does this mean the cat is out of the bag? We will know for sure in about a month when Microsoft takes the wraps off of Natal at E3.

Via Kotaku

Bullshot! Is:

• Host: Jim Plachy
• Color Commentator and Producer: Brendan “Fish” Saricks
• Perennial Guest Host: Eli Hodapp of Touch Arcade and EGMnow

Pretend that text down there is written in a different language. It will help.

So get this, some guy left his Project Natal on a barstool! Oh wait, no that was something else. What we have here is the supposed “quick start” manual for Project Natal. The picture along with a few others are from an Italian site called Multiplayer.it and while it’s cool to see the unit and the manual the real juicy bit of information here is that Natal needs it’s own power source. Why, you ask? Because Natal can actually tilt on it’s base all by its self in order to track users better. Of course there’s no actual guarantee that any of this stuff is real, but we can dream, can’t we?

James Gunn is a movie director and by default more famous than you or I. Last year he trashed Microsoft for not giving him any creative freedom when it came to directing a direct to Xbox Live short film. Yesterday was a different story, because they let him play Project Natal, which at this point will most likely be called Natal when it actually comes out. I mean, come on, how could it not? Anyways, he played a game called River Rush.

Famous Director James Gunn says:

“[River Rush is] a game where you stand side by side in a river raft, so it’s two people playing at once … to move right, you have to step right; to move left, you have to step left [and] As you rush down right rapids, you have to jump up and slap floating stars in the air — the whole raft jumps up every time you do.”

So there you go. If you were afraid that Natal might just be some casual nonsense you might be want to keep being afraid. As for me, I continue to be hopelessly optimistic.

Via Joystiq

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