Project Natal Spotted in the Wild But Not in a Bar [Microsoft’s Project Natal Peripheral Ready for Some Motion Control Gaming? Device Not Official Yet]

Okay, so the story goes like this, a young Microsoft employee working on Project Natal development went out with some friends on his birthday carrying a Project Natal peripheral in his pocket conveniently disguised as a regular Xbox 360… Naturally that didn’t happen but the device has been spotted in the wild two months ahead of actual launch.

What we know so far is that Microsoft is going to hold a special event at E3 on June 13 where this motion gaming device will be officially unveiled in all its glory. Microsoft’s special E3 event might also bring us a totally new Xbox 360 version that would better compete against the PlayStation 3 Slim although there’s no way to confirm any of this just yet.

Getting back to the Project Natal unit in the picture above, we hear that the device hasn’t been photographed anywhere in the USA and, in fact this particular device has been spotted somewhere in Italy while in testing.

More interestingly, the owner of this particular device was testing the voice recognition software of Project Natal which promises to be a really important device for our future gaming. I’ll be curious to see how voice commands will be handled by the device especially since the software will have to deal with lots of different accents from different parts of the world.

The Project Natal unit in the pictures here apparently came with the full “Quick Start Guide” which suggests that the unit will have to be powered by an external power source at all times. Also the “Important” notice on the cover reads:

The sensor array includes a new motorized tilt mechanism. Do not manually tilt the sensor array on base. Doing so can damage the tilt mechanism.

So, can the Project Natal be damaged that easily? I’m sure that, if real, this is just a working prototype and hopefully the final version of Project Natal will be pretty durable too.