The Project Natal camera is a neat little piece of hardware, able to recognize 31 separate body parts and respond to motions within a fraction of a second, according to the New Scientist [thanks Kotaku]. All of this motion sensing will come at a price, however... namely between 10 to 15 percent of the system's CPU.
This amount of processor usage is notable, because it suggests that Natal no longer has the internal processor present in earlier prototypes. While certainly not likely to lag the Xbox 360 by itself, 10 to 15 percent of the CPU's clock cycles could possibly limit the sort of titles that could use Natal and it would almost certainly eliminate the possibility of quick-and-easy patches of older games to make them compatible with the device.
1 Comments
February 18, 2010
10-15% doesn't seem like that much to me. But I'm glad it'll "force" developers to work on Natal specific titles and not just re-work old games that everyone would just fire up once to try and never play again.
This whole Natal thing is getting more interesting to me, but I'm still anxious to see what the price will be. There's a balance between price and functionality that will make or break Natal.
r4i carta