Microsoft has decided to remove a chip from their upcoming Natal motion control system in order to be able to launch the platform later this year at an affordable price.

The chip was responsible for the information processing of Natal's "bone system" and will now be replaced by a softwarematic solution. The problem with the 100ms system lag will not be solved with this move but it will give MS the possibility to release updates faster and easier compared to with a hardware system.

Processing will now be done by one of the three Xenon cpus, but only a small percentage of its power will be necessary as most games don't use its full capacity.

Removing the chip also confirms the speculation that older non-Natal games won't be getting a patch to integrate motion control.

Developers on the other hand do get the opportunity to write their own code for the "bone system" with the necessary support from Microsoft.

Thanks to the still present lag, fast games will not be an option on Natal which may result in a buttload of worthless party games on the Xbox360. The wet dream of any profit-hunting publisher, any hardcore gamer's worst nightmare.

We hope our fears won't become true.

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