High, high praise for the Xbox 360's new 'Natal' system

Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch got to play a sneak peak of a game using Natal.

... The game I and others were playing was called Ricochet. You see your the back of your blue avatar on the screen (similar to first person shooters) You hit red balls against a group of targets in front of a wall. You can hit the balls, which bounce back towards you after hitting the wall, with your hands or any other body part. Headers, kicks, knees, whatever. You get points for speed and accuracy. You can see a video of Ricochet here.
Ricochet is a lot like Pong actually. Not much to it.
But it was so damn fun.
After I played a game and others took their turn I looked around. Everyone was smiling, and laughing, just like the neighbors back in 1976 while watch Pong. And the Microsoft employees were carefully watching us smiling. They looked like they’d seen that reaction before. Forbes Quentin Hardy, sitting next to me, drew the analogy to Pong (and then wrote about it). I wholeheartedly agree. There’s something very special about Natal that goes way beyond what Nintendo did with the Wii. I can’t wait to get my hands on one later this year.

Read the whole thing at TechCrunch, it's really glowing.  And has me more excited about it catching on.  My main problem with Natal is that is has the peripheral huddle to clear.  The installed base starts at zero the day it comes out.  So not only do you have to buy Natal, but only games made specifically for it will work with this new interface.  Also there's the extra cost of bundling it with any new Xbox 360.  These factors greatly reduce Natal's appeal for developers putting their top money and talent towards it.  Because there is little cross platform potential because it's so different and it's only a fraction of all Xbox 360's out there.  All I have to say is that it had better be very inexpensive.