If you haven’t seen or heard about Microsoft’s project Natal, you can check it out at the Xbox website here. Basically it’s a similar concept to the Wii where you control a video game with motion except Natal doesn’t use a controller in any form other than human. You are the controller.

It seems to work really well and so far I’m hearing really great reviews on it. It’s another step forward for the gaming industry and a big threat to the Wii. It’s a really neat idea and as you can see at the Xbox website linked above, it has a wide range of possibilities. As neat of an idea as this is, I have my concerns. Here are some pros and cons.

Pros

1. Fat kids that play too much video games might loose weight
2. Geeks might get some actual exercise and potentially learn how to fight
3. It could encourage more “family time” (more likely family bickering to see who gets to play next)
4. Clumsy people will break things and themselves resulting in entertainment for me
5. Funny videos of people playing the system and looking like idiots will result in entertainment for me
6. Spoiled and disrespectful children will stay at home playing this and I won’t have to deal with them

Cons

1. Geeks and fat kids that play too much video games will begin to think they know how to fight resulting in a huge increase in kids being beat up
2. It’s another step forward for people with half a brain or less to blur the lines between reality and imagination potentially resulting in all sorts of horrific things
3. There’s no physical interaction so people will get misguided ideas that they can do things they really can’t, like play basketball or golf, resulting in disappointment, depression and ultimately more time spent playing video games
4. When will this be converted for use like in Minority Report?
5. How many people’s arms and legs will be sacrificed to purchase this thing?
6. When will this turn into a virtual world for people and my neighbor(s) will walk around their living room talking to their TV all day?
7. People will say they’ve gone camping but actually just went virtual camping

I could keep going on the cons but I think you get the idea…