The Fable 3 announcement had creator Peter Molyneux saying he was throwing away the “foundation stone” of RPGs. Yeah, I thought, you’ve been saying that kind of thing for 20 years now buddy. Show me the money. And in a pleasant surprise, it looks like he may actually be doing that; he confirmed today that the game will use the Natal motion controller, which makes him probably the technology’s biggest on-the-record developer. He already hinted that this was the case, but now it seems that Microsoft is giving the go-ahead for making official announcements.

Maybe I’m speaking for the minority here, but I have to get this off my chest: Project Natal is sorta “meh,” no? I attended Popular Mechanics’ Breakthrough Awards for a few minutes last night, and they had on display Project Natal. It was that paint-throwing game. Now, I know that’s just a tech demo, but I left feeling a little concerned about its future.

When a company says they’d like to think they might make an announcement about some games four or five months from now, you know you’re in trouble. We were all hoping (against all rational thought) that we might at least get an idea of what’s coming for these new motion controllers by Christmas, but no. I guess that although Sega is one of the first to announce that they’ll be making an announcement, it doesn’t mean they’ll be the first with games out. So there’s still hope…

1up just had a little developer roundtable about the upcoming motion controllers (and, uh, the “leading brand” as well).While these guys are bound by diplomacy not to say stuff like “Sony is rubbish” or “Nintendo is going down,” they do make their feelings felt in slightly more polite terms.

The consensus seems to be that each has its own strengths (I know, boring) and that innovation is going to be slow in coming.

THQ, fresh off winning a whole bunch of dollars at the expense of toy maker Jakks Pacific re: WWE video games, said yesterday that Microsoft’s Project Natal will launch “late next year.” And if you believe that…

News from the East. It looks like Microsoft is all set to produce Project Natal-equipped Xbox 360s by the second half of 2010. Might as well circle your calendar. California-based Aptina will produce the 1.3-megapixel CMOS sensor required to get Project Natal up and running. (That’s it. Don’t click “Read More” because there isn’t more.)

I didn’t put it in quotes because he more endorsed it than straight up said it was happening, but I think we all know that if the big guy sees it happening, it’s probably happening sometime soon. Gates was talking about Natal in an broad and interesting interview over at CNET, and mentioned that Microsoft Research is deep into working on home and office implementations of the flashy stereo-camera setup. Great, because I’m planning on running Windows 7 for the next five years (or more, if it’s the next XP), and the touch and apparently motion controls being researched are making it a more and more versatile operating system than it already is.

Did ya catch Jimmy Fallon last night? Well, he demoed Project Natal with Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunado and Jim from The Office. Not only was last night’s demo a bit more exciting than the E3 announcement, but it also showed off how Natal can be ported to racing games like Burnout Paradise. (Spoiler: You basically air drive the car with an imaginary steering wheel and peddles.) You must check out this video.

Raise your hand if you thought Microsoft’s press conference was a bit of a bore this morning? Aside from Natal, I wasn’t all that impressed by any of the upcoming titles (except for Conviction and maybe The Beatles Rock Band) or the updates to Xbox Live. Lionhead really stole the show when they unveiled a little AI boy named Milo.