
MS just announced some pretty awesome stuff for the Xbox - viggity
http://gizmodo.com/5273957/microsoft-e3-keynote-live-right-now?skyline=true&s=x
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jrockway
I hope Natal works out as well in real life as it does in the ads. I really
like some of the motion-sensitive Wii games... but Wii games have terrible
graphics, and I find that distracting. Having games that are both motion
sensitive AND full HD will be wonderful. (I wonder if there will be a Mirror's
Edge 2 that takes advantage of this.)

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stcredzero
If Natal works, there's tremendous applications in terms of interactivity at
_work_. How about we leverage this stuff for "Minority Report" type interfaces
with 50" flat screen TVs? How about rear projection? Imagine collaborative
picture or movie editing over the net? Can stuff like this be leveraged for
pair programming? How about animated CRC cards which can execute and animate
their functionality? Such things have been possible for awhile now, appearing
in places like TED. Natal and the dropping price of big TVs can make them
easily accessible to small and mid-sized companies.

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jerf
At first I was _really_ skeptical that the motion stuff was more Hollywood
demo than reality. Then I took a closer look at the sensor bar:

<http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/e3xbox/e3xbox300.jpg>

I don't think that yellow thing to the left is a camera, but if both those
other holes are cameras, then that would mean the XBox could indeed be getting
full 3D information on you, and that really does open up some interesting
possibilities. I doubt the demos are possible with silhouettes, but with full
3D information... maybe.

I remain skeptical until I try it, but I have to admit I'm intrigued. This
really could be a big deal. It's cool not because current games will translate
to this; they're all specialized for current controllers. It's cool because
this will enable new things, some of which are things that the Wii seemed to
hint at but doesn't seem to have been able to execute on.

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snprbob86
There are indeed two cameras and a microphone array. The hardware design is
still not final, but it is able to extract accurate depth information.
Similarly, the software is not final, but the skeletal tracking demos which I
have seen have been pretty impressive.

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snprbob86
In the interest of correctness, I should say they aren't both normal cameras.
In the interest of keeping my job, I won't say more. Needless to say: our APIs
will provide at least depth, color, and skeletons. Cool stuff :-)

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tlrobinson
If this is as cool as it looks, it's one hell of a response to the Wii.

That said, I'm a little skeptical, the lack of any sort of tactile feedback,
even just holding an object, may be awkward.

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viggity
Here is a video of the Natal. Wow.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03thQvGRVvQ&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03thQvGRVvQ&feature=player_embedded)

I just hope it works as advertised and I hope it has an easy to use API/SDK.

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chaosmachine
Yikes. I wonder how Nintendo can respond to this. Microsoft is really going
for their throat here.

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gchucky
Just to rub it in Nintendo's face a bit more, during the demonstration at E3,
the guy explaining the system said "This isn't a game where you end up on the
sofa just kind of using some preset waggle commands."

Ow.

~~~
potatolicious
'Tis true though. I've worked briefly with the Wiimote, and it really isn't as
capable as advertised - forget tracking any sort of complex gestural
movements, it's really only good for jerks and twists - i.e. something that
saturates the sensor good.

This thing is going to absolutely destroy the Wii, if it works as
advertised...

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Jem
In the Rayman: Raving Rabbids games, one of the minigames involves tracing an
outline on the screen with as much accuracy as possible. I don't know whether
or not you'd consider that "complex", but it certainly involves a little more
than jerks and twists. (Just the first thing that came to mind :) )

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liamkf
The pointer and the accelerometers are two separate things. I haven't heard
many complaints about the pointer accuracy (which is what Rayman uses for the
section you're thinking of).

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Jem
I don't know the technical specifics, so I'll take your word for it ;)

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potatolicious
The Wii sensor bar combined with the little camera inside your Wiimote can
give you a reasonably accurate estimate of where your wiimote is pointed on
the screen.

This is quite bad at gestures though, particularly when the front of the
Wiimote is pointed away from the sensor bar (as it is in games like boxing and
tennis). In these cases, lacking a visual way to tell movement, the controller
relies entirely on the accelerometer, which while theoretically capable,
saturate very quickly with full body motion.

This is why in Raving Rabbids, where you have to play rabbid-DDR with the
music, you have to jerk the controller - the accelerometer is neither reliable
nor accurate enough to reliably infer your intentions through light motions.

~~~
Jem
Thanks for clarifying (I never can do those music minigames!)

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whatusername
The voice recognition stuff also looked impressive.

Buzz (Quiz game) with voice recognition is a killer feature. (My mother in law
would probably buy one for that)

~~~
anigbrowl
With the camera and internet play (see the other family) it's going to be
_bad_ for that segment of the TV market, because it'll be easy to set up
tournaments with cash prizes. Way more people will compete to win $1000 than
will watch TV to watch someone else win $100,000.

On an unrelated note, I wonder if/how they're going to prevent it being used
for porn. Obviously they won't allow porn games but the video chat + bored
teens makes that kind of activity pretty much inevitable.

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stcredzero
_Obviously they won't allow porn games but the video chat + bored teens makes
that kind of activity pretty much inevitable._

There are already porn avatars aplenty. That will make "sexting" visible --
instead of writing and imagining it, you'll just see it. The imagery is
probably better with well written text, though. Your imagination is the most
vivid rendering system there is.

All that has to happen is for SecondLife to get the interface.

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marcocampos
Can't wait to put my hands on it and start hacking some crazy software. Of
course someone will have to write some drivers for it...

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I'm guessing that it's USB or Bluetooth, like existing hardware for the
system. Windows Vista actually has drivers for the Xbox 360 controllers out of
the box. This may end up being surprisingly hackable.

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axod
So they announced twitter integration, facebook integration, last.fm stuff.

Call me ridiculous, but have they not considered the possibility of releasing
a web browser instead? Then people could have twitter, facebook, last.fm, and
whatever else they want. Why is this so hard for microsoft to do?

Having said that, the xBox hardware is so noisy it's not a good machine to use
for much apart from gaming.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
The lack of a web browser is indeed a glaring hole in the system capabilities,
but the optical drive noise is a bit of a red herring these days with the
ability to install games to disk. It runs silently when you do that.

~~~
axod
That's actually another gripe of mine. What the hell is the point of giving me
a HDD to copy games to, if I still have to insert the disc to play it.
Complete and utter failure. Also on mine at any rate, the noise from the fans
it most of the issue.

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LogicHoleFlaw
Maybe I just have a newer model? The fans run silent for me. If they were
noisy that would be aggravating, I agree.

Also, needing to have the disc in place to play HDD games is ridiculous. No
question about it.

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swombat
Is this real or just a "product vision" kind of video based on no concrete
technology?

If they have actually solved the hard problems involved in making this
technology work, it's extremely cool.

If they have not, it's somewhat akin to a video suggesting that they'll build
technology to allow people to fly without any equipment, just by flapping
their arms.

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dougp
They demoed it live on stage. They didn't just play this video for everyone in
the audience...

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leej
It seems like there is no release date or price info but anyway demo is very
cool.

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viggity
Here is a slightly better link:

[http://gizmodo.com/5273957/microsoft-e3-keynote-
archive?skyl...](http://gizmodo.com/5273957/microsoft-e3-keynote-
archive?skyline=true&s=i)

I'm really looking forward to CoD Modern Warfare 2 - the trailer looks
ridiculous. I've wanted a new video card for a while, but I'm not going to let
myself buy one (or an accompanying 24" monitor) until I get my product
launched. Looks like my deadline is November.

