One of the bigger bits of information, with follow up video, at Microsoft’s E3 2009 showing Monday turns out to be the physically smallest.
Codenamed, "Project Natal", the ambitious new motion-capture, voice and face recognition peripheral aims to beckon the XBOX 360 into the age of motion-control, attempting to cash in on the mega success of similar "controllerless" ideas from Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s Eye Toy, and measuring no more than nine inches across.
Demos showed a young girl walking up to the TV and flawlessly conversing with her friend via voice chat, with Natal supposedly recognizing her face and granting her wish to "Hook up with Sarah". Her friend then asks (via teleconference with an implied Natal on the other end) whether she picked out a dress for "the party" yet. Sarah then chooses one for her via a shop interface with her own hand motions from the other end.
Other demos show the brother of the family playing a Tony-Hawk-like skateboarding game, holding up his actual skateboard for Natal to recognize its shape so he could apply in-game decals and flipping the virtual board with nothing but a jump of his own body. In the same way he was able to fight a virtual martial arts master with real world punches and kicks.
But perhaps the most impressive example of Natal’s potential, other than drumming up the actual onstage cameo appearance of Steven Spielberg, was seen when Peter Molyneux, Lionhead Studios founder, demoed a piece of software where a young virtual boy named Milo could interact with a real world woman and react to the various gestures and facial expressions she conveyed, conveying his own in return. In another scene he has her walk up to the edge of a dock, looking over into the sparkling pool at her own reflection being refracted and twisted as she runs her hands through the air in our world while her virtual self plays in the water. Later she even holds up a piece of paper near the Natal device which then translates to Milo grabbing a similarly shaped object in the virtual world so he can draw on it.
If that didn’t give you goosebumps as a gamer, I’m not sure you have a soul... sorry :(
In all seriousness, you’re not the only one raising an eyebrow here. The product screams of Eye-Toy ripoff and does consist of a similar singular unit. So it’s a little hard to comprehend how this all works to produce the amazing stuff proposed while Eye-Toy couldn’t. Any of the more complex stuff, like Milo recognizing everything the woman said, could have easily been scripted and practiced, and my decades’ worth of gaming experience leans towards that it was.
But Mr. Molyneux himself states that the same "realtime" "Milo" demo will be available to select press individuals to test for themselves, so we’ll await a further verdict until the jury convenes.
Needless to say this can only be thought of as a very smart move by Microsoft to combat Nintendo while growing their user base "without introducing a new console" and I for one am always excited to witness yet another step towards nixing the standard controller all together.
Have a look for yourself, then you be the judge:
