..I usually agree with you about 99% of the time, Shamus. But you're wrong on the reason to be skeptical about either Natal or the Arc-thing 
The tech behind the Arc.. move... is solid. It's something that should have been what introduced motion gaming, and it's a much easier system to port from other kinds of peripherals because of the mapping in three dimensions (along with the twist along the z-axis). The occlusion detection as well is extremely good - if you've seen it in action, you're starting to wonder why in the world no one is actually interested more in this part of the move. Because we're really having some monstrous potential going on here.
The possible fail that can happen here, is that Sony manages to blow their first and third party support, and never get another title developed for the move-controls specifically during the life-time of the console. And that we're going to be stuck with wii remakes and hand-waving.
Basically, console devs may turn up with a one-hit wonder, but then get drowned out by devs using the same scheme and abstraction for motion gaming as is there with the wii, and that will be specifically made for 2d gestures, rather than tracking an object in 3d.
It's a bit on the same track with the Knitectt..Kint.. Natal. It won't actually work with hand-gestures, and with depth-perception we're talking about very simple motions. For example, instead of pushing gradually on a Katamari, we're talking about either off or on based on two distinct layers, or else we're talking about sensing activity with the hands on a particular area. This is not something that can be universally translated to any game, but has to be specifically made for particular titles where it actually makes sense to use it.
So in either of those cases, we have different but very similar problems at this time - that the coolest games on either platform has to be specifically made to only that system (..except I guess natal-games would also work with the move, just without the entire "dip your hand into the cyber-water" thing... :/ ).
In fact, it's like you say: the presentation Sony had wasn't very good. It's strange to cut Sony for advertising too much - but that's the problem here. Instead of showing what they have, which actually is impressive, they opted for more commercials and glossy fake families.
..admittedly, no one complained about that when MS did the same earlier, but hey..
But the tech behind the move is solid. There should be absolutely no doubt about that. It's accurate, it's real, it works, and it's the PC developer's dream to a much higher degree than any infra-red camera, or virtual gloves, or anything like that. It's also cheap, durable and without moving parts. It's solid, it works.
The question is if there will be more games like Kung-Fu Rider made (with dynamic animation fitted to the move-controller, and action that really is responsive to what you're doing at all times, not just in waggle-events) - or if we end up with a slew of "console-games" with waggle support. That's what's going to make or break this.
And it's almost the same with the other systems - it's whether games are specifically made to them that will make them work well, or be worth buying. Whether we will get some hotspot on the rails experiences with Natal that really are smoking hot, just as whether Zelda is going to work neatly on the wii+.
Of course, you will notice that only the move is actually capable of mapping some accurate movement, and that it's the only system on the market with 3d orientation. So that it actually doesn't require devs to create gestures to work in particular games, and will be able to go further. We could for example see the first space-sim on a console now (someone hire Particle Systems back, hm?). Or imagine playing Homeworld or Nexus: the Jupiter Incident style games on your HD screen? This kind of thing could be freaking great.
But... Sony. So until they stop deliberately screwing everything up... skepticism. ..just not for the reasons you gave there in the article..
The tech behind the Arc.. move... is solid. It's something that should have been what introduced motion gaming, and it's a much easier system to port from other kinds of peripherals because of the mapping in three dimensions (along with the twist along the z-axis). The occlusion detection as well is extremely good - if you've seen it in action, you're starting to wonder why in the world no one is actually interested more in this part of the move. Because we're really having some monstrous potential going on here.The possible fail that can happen here, is that Sony manages to blow their first and third party support, and never get another title developed for the move-controls specifically during the life-time of the console. And that we're going to be stuck with wii remakes and hand-waving.
Basically, console devs may turn up with a one-hit wonder, but then get drowned out by devs using the same scheme and abstraction for motion gaming as is there with the wii, and that will be specifically made for 2d gestures, rather than tracking an object in 3d.
It's a bit on the same track with the Knitectt..Kint.. Natal. It won't actually work with hand-gestures, and with depth-perception we're talking about very simple motions. For example, instead of pushing gradually on a Katamari, we're talking about either off or on based on two distinct layers, or else we're talking about sensing activity with the hands on a particular area. This is not something that can be universally translated to any game, but has to be specifically made for particular titles where it actually makes sense to use it.
So in either of those cases, we have different but very similar problems at this time - that the coolest games on either platform has to be specifically made to only that system (..except I guess natal-games would also work with the move, just without the entire "dip your hand into the cyber-water" thing... :/ ).
In fact, it's like you say: the presentation Sony had wasn't very good. It's strange to cut Sony for advertising too much - but that's the problem here. Instead of showing what they have, which actually is impressive, they opted for more commercials and glossy fake families.
..admittedly, no one complained about that when MS did the same earlier, but hey..
But the tech behind the move is solid. There should be absolutely no doubt about that. It's accurate, it's real, it works, and it's the PC developer's dream to a much higher degree than any infra-red camera, or virtual gloves, or anything like that. It's also cheap, durable and without moving parts. It's solid, it works.
The question is if there will be more games like Kung-Fu Rider made (with dynamic animation fitted to the move-controller, and action that really is responsive to what you're doing at all times, not just in waggle-events) - or if we end up with a slew of "console-games" with waggle support. That's what's going to make or break this.
And it's almost the same with the other systems - it's whether games are specifically made to them that will make them work well, or be worth buying. Whether we will get some hotspot on the rails experiences with Natal that really are smoking hot, just as whether Zelda is going to work neatly on the wii+.
Of course, you will notice that only the move is actually capable of mapping some accurate movement, and that it's the only system on the market with 3d orientation. So that it actually doesn't require devs to create gestures to work in particular games, and will be able to go further. We could for example see the first space-sim on a console now (someone hire Particle Systems back, hm?). Or imagine playing Homeworld or Nexus: the Jupiter Incident style games on your HD screen? This kind of thing could be freaking great.
But... Sony. So until they stop deliberately screwing everything up... skepticism. ..just not for the reasons you gave there in the article..
