As far as real games go, the best thing that can come from these is head-tracking from Natal. If it always knows where your head is automatically, it can turn any game that supports Natal into amazing 3D with real depth. Automatically. For every new game. That's exciting.

Also, it being able to sign you and your friends in and out automatically would make things much easier at those rock band parties. And another thing; it could know which side of the screen to put player 2 when playing split-screen, because it knows on which side of the couch player 2 is sitting. Automatically. Those are the features of Natal that will impact normal games and our Xbox experience. The rest, as this article points out, are minigames.

Fantastic stuff!

What this article says about Metroid, I agree with wholeheartedly... except for the part about this new game being on the DS. Let's not fool ourselves; compared to our home theater setups, that thing is terrible. For a new Metroid, I'd take what I could get -- no doubt about that -- but if we dare to dream, let's dream it comes out on Wiiware at the very least, and a glorious, feature-packed, triple-A disc of blinding awesome at best. Heck, you know you want it on PS360 even more. Whoa, just imagine.

Anyway, when you think about it, this February will be the fifth anniversary of the last entry in the original Metroid series (a.k.a. not the Prime series). It's so preposterously overdue for a well-loved, popular series, I can't understand it.

One more thing; the old article with the series shake-up ideas: it could be because of a combination of my youthful imagination and the game's lack of a Galactic Codex, but I tell ya, Super Metroid WAS a grounded, dark, isolation-horror game (as much as it could be on a SNES). And I loved it. It wasn't until the Prime series took over that Metroid got real goofy; what with the overabundance of pulsing, Tron-esque lights, a mutagenic goo that turns inanimate rocks into roaring monsters, and not to mention Ice Man and Mystique getting fake IDs and crossing over into Prime 3's story. I'd love to see Metroid get Battlestar'd. Something like Dead Space in tone, like Brett said. Gore notwithstanding. I would love for it to be as weighted and serious as I remember Super Metroid being.

So, were I in charge of Nintendo right now, I'd fire everyone on the best team there, -- hear me out -- personally start up a new independent studio, hire all those same guys for it, sell the Metroid license to the new studio, get production rolling on a realistic, dark, gritty, border-line depressing Metroid game, and make it 2D, but with the best, most beautiful 3D graphics possible, and release it for Xbox 360 and PS3. Throw in four-player online co-op, competitive multiplayer modes with COD-style XP gain and unlocks... everything! Then port the game to Wii. Just imagine! :)