A big red orb is hovering in the air at eye level in front of me, so I instinctively wind up and whack it with my fist, like a volleyball player serving a blistering ace.
It rebounds off a brick wall and heads back towards me, and I leap up and headbutt it. Again it ricochets back, this time low and off to the side, so I kick my leg out like Chris Osgood making a corner save, snagging a piece of the ball before it sails by.
Except the ball isn’t really there. Neither is the wall. They’re both just images on a flatscreen TV in front of me, which is connected to an Xbox 360 game console and a mind-blowing new device that could very well change video games as we know them.
In a bid to leapfrog Nintendo and the hyper-popular, family-friendly Wii, Microsoft has taken the wraps off a new Xbox 360 accessory that the company vows will usher in an era of “controller-free” games, in which players use their bodies and voices to direct the action on-screen.
Codenamed Project Natal, the device is a sleek horizontal bar fitted with cameras, sensors and microphones, and will allow players to simply act out whatever they want their video game characters to do, without the need to press buttons, flick joysticks or waggle a remote.

“Instead of learning what to do with a controller, you can control your avatar just by moving your body around,” Natal’s creative director Kudo Tsunoda told Sun Media in an exclusive hands-on demonstration at Microsoft’s Seattle-area headquarters, prior to its unveiling at the 2009 E3 Expo video game trade show in Los Angeles.
The Natal device won’t be available until sometime next year, and it currently doesn’t have an official name, much less a retail price. But Microsoft executives say it will form the foundation of a new breed of not just video games, but entertainment as a whole. And Hollywood agrees.
“The vast majority of people are just too intimidated to pick up a video game controller,” said director Steven Spielberg, who helped unveil Project Natal at Microsoft’s E3 press conference. He likened the technology to film’s transition from square screens to widescreen Cinemascope, and predicted it will open video games up to a much wider audience.
And I believe him. In the “Ricochet” demo with the ball and the brick wall, the moment I stepped in front of the Natal device, a translucent purple silhouette appeared on the screen, mimicking my movements like a digital shadow. Sitting, standing, walking, jumping, crossing my arms behind my back – no matter what I did, my on-screen avatar did the same. It made this jaded old gamer grin with delight.
Project Natal isn’t the first attempt at making a video game accessory that allows players to control the action on the screen with physical movements, but it’s a quantum leap ahead of anything that’s come before, accurately tracking a player’s entire body in 3-D space, with face and voice recognition features to boot. It’s the Star Trek holodeck in beta.
Imagine a football video game in which a player calls an audible, takes a snap and then throws the ball by pumping his arm in the direction of an on-screen receiver. Or talking to a digital character who reacts to your movements and words, as demonstrated at Microsoft’s press conference in a demo by Fable designer Peter Molyneux.
“It really is about finally breaking down the barriers that prevent the console from becoming the centre of home entertainment,” said Microsoft’s Shane Kim, one of the executives in charge of all things Xbox. “This is about making you the controller, where the only experience you need is life experience.”
Other announcements from Microsoft:
Via Canoe.ca and Engadget
June 1st, 2009 |