There's no need for conjecture; Microsoft's upcoming motion control peripheral, once known as Project Natal, is now to be officially known as "Kinect".
"For lots of people, that controller is a barrier," Microsoft creative director Kudo Tsunoda told USA Today. "We set out to make a new control paradigm where anybody can get in and play, without having to read the instructions or learn a complicated set of controls."


In addition to the rebranding, a number of Kinect titles were also revealed in the USA Today report, including a Star Wars game from Lucasarts, a Disney game, a dance title from MTV (interesting), a pet-training title, a Wii Sports clone called "Kinect Sports" (which we believe Rare is developing), an adventure sports game and, as expected, the return of Joyride as a motion-controlled game.
So, goodbye, Project Natal. You were a strange name, but we grew to love you in a way we could never do with something as stupid as "Kinect".

UPDATE - Here's a shot from the floor of the Kinect-focused performance by Cirque du Soleil.


If you asked me, Kinect is one hell of a strange name,


Here are some of the games that will be out,

Kinectimals let's you train and play with 20 different virtual cats. Or perhaps that's Catz. With tigers and lions in the mix, this is hardly Microsoft's version of Nintendogs, but the Petz series from Ubisoft has touched on tigers before.
But wait, we're interacting with them on a screen, without use of any sort of controller! That's new and exciting, right?
No, that's EyePet, already released in several regions, but retooled for North American release alongside the PlayStation Move.

Then there's Kinect Sports, with its boxing, bowling, beach volleyball, track and field, soccer and table tennis. It's Wii Sports, without holding anything. Hell, during the early days of the Wii, Wii Sports often turned into Wii Sports without holding anything, albeit while gaping at your newly cracked television screen and wondering where your Wii remote flew off to.

Kinect Adventures contains river rafting and an obstacle course. They probably should have included this with Kinect Sports and called it Kinect Sports Resort.

Dance Central from MTV Games brings the So You Think You Can Dance? experience home. Just like Just Dance did, only slightly different.

Surely there is some innovation? What about Joy Ride? The avatar-based, co-operation-fueled driving game was a big hit at last year's E3, promising an amazing community experience that would be a free download to all Xbox Live users. It sounded amazing!

And now it's a Kinect game, where players hold an imaginary steering wheel in the air, tilting forward and back to accelerate and brake. It sounds like they've taken BigPark's game, integrated the controls they showed off last year for a Natal-powered Burnout, and might be selling it instead of giving it away. I guess that counts as innovating and new.