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Revolutionary is a word that doesn't come along with any real meaning all that often, but yesterday at E3 it did. In big green Xbox-like letters. Yes, revolutionary. Except spelled differently....
This time it was spelled Project Natal...
It's been rumoured all over the internet quite a lot recently and yesterday during the Microsoft press conference we all got to see the light, the amazing wonderment that was Microsoft's new motion controller.
Unlike Wii's Wiimote and PS3's Sixaxis system Project Natal enables gamers to interact with their games in many exciting and new ways. It looks a little like the Wii sensor bar but acts as a camera that is capable of recognising not only body movements, but also faces objects and most impressively, voices.
A few examples were shown at E3 which included a few everyday scenarios. One of which was that of a boy holding up a skateboard, which then appeared on the screen, and then the boy then riding his skateboard by just swaying back and forth on his feet. Then we were treated to watching two women trying on virtual clothes using a camera image of themselves. Also showcased were examples of facial recognition, voice control, and just to add icing to an already tasty cake, the things of movies were made possible when we were shown how browsing the NXE by using hand controls as in the movie Minority Report is no longer just science fiction.
The creative director of Project Natal, Kudo Tsunoda was also there and showed us his Xbox Live avatar moving with his actual movements and playing a couple of tech demos, which included a handball game and also a stencil painting game not entirely dissimilar to the Wii graffiti application currently being played with in Europe.
Microsoft partners have already received development kits for Project Natal, and even though there are no concrete dates on when it will finally be unleashed on the gaming public we can only expect great and interesting things from it.
Now if that wasn't enough, Fable creator and god amongst men Peter Molyneux was on hand to present a demo of his own. He showed us Milo, which had a real life woman and a small on screen boy who interacted with each other. One of the interactions shown was the boy throwing the woman a pair of goggles which she could reach out and grab on screen. Also Milo can recognise emotions from joy, to sadness, to being scared. Impressive stuff.
Microsoft bought their presentation forward from 10:30am by 5 minutes on the premise of a surprise, and they certainly did deliver a showstopping presentation that not only blew the crowd away, but also everyone watching online. And this was only the first presentation of E3.
Can the rest of E3 get better or is that more the thing of science fiction than Microsoft's efforts themselves? Find out for yourself by clicking below. First is the trailer presentation and if that wasn't enough coming up after that, Peter Molyneux's presentation too.
