Microsoft’s new motion controller uses object, movement, and voice recognition to deliver a new kind of immersive gaming experience.
Awesome!
“The next step in interactive entertainment is to make the controller disappear” ~ Steven Spielberg
“You are the controller,” teased Microsoft at their E3 conference today, firing the shot heard round the blogosphere: a no-controls-whatsoever motion-sensing device.
“Can we make you the controller?” they asked, before answering with an Obama-like “Yes we can.” Forget Steve Austin, it’s The Six Million Dollar Design Grail: Gentlemen, we can rebuild you…we have the technology…better, stronger, faster…and did we mention without an external controller?
Like a nerdy gladiator swaggering onstage to do battle with breathlessly expectant fans and naysayers alike, Microsoft utterly wowed with “Project Natal.” I mean really wowed. Yeah, it’s kind of a dumb name, but it may turn out to be the most impressive show item any company’s crowed about in years. It’s Nintendo’s Wii without the gangly Wii-remote, Sony’s Eye Toy with dramatically better vision. The promise of interaction without wires or widgets. The future you’d been thinking was still a year or three away.
What we saw today was unprecedented: True 1-to-1 motion tracking. Wave your arm and your onscreen avatar follows you precisely. Bend, yoga-like, to form cute animal shadow-shapes and a silhouetted image on a virtual canvas curls and contorts picture-perfectly. Shift toe-to-toe, tennis-like, anticipating objects hurled your way and whatever algorithms are intelligently sorting behind the scenes recognize your intentions, filtering out flailing limbs or ignoring unnecessary maneuvers.