just watched the Microsoft press conference live from E3 (unfortunately at 3:30am here), and holy **** Project Natal, their new motion capturing camera is amazing. Calling it just a motion sensor is selling it short, because it also has image scanning (to a standard of facial recognition) and sound recognition (to recognising particular peoples voices). Holy **** it looks amazing. That Milo demo really blew my mind.

I may have gotten pretty excited when I first saw the Wii demo'd during a previous E3 conference, but this is just mind blowing. This is controller free technology. Think Minority Report, how he would disect the images using his hands. The Wii showed the possibility of limited movement control in games, but this is the logical conclusion to that. In fact, it's the furtherest point you could possibly take it. It's the be all and end all, most likely. They talk themselves up during those conferences to the point where it makes you feel ill to hear, even going so far as to get Steven Spielberg come on stage just to say good things about it even when he had no other reason to be there at all. But I really believe it's true that this is a landmark moment. This will change everything.

Unfortuantely, I have to acknowledge the fact that, like the Wii controller system, it seemed amazing and innovative, but in the end it becomes just simple and mundane when put into the hands of software developers. They never even made a game on the Wii that actually made me want one. I can blame this on Nintendo only going for a niche market, as they do, but really it's the industry that lets us down. They're scared of new stuff, and noone is willing to gamble a huge investment on something that may not pay off when theres thousands of tried and true things they could do. But also there's the fact that currents tyleof games rely on controllers. It's an immutable fact of gaming that you be able to play said game, not live it or experience it directly. With full motion capture, what we're dealing with isn't immediately obvious to gaming, it is simply immersion. It doesn't even have to be a game, just look at Lionhead's Milo demo, interacting in a realistic and incredibly immersive way with a fully graphical representation of AI, the impression of an actual entity. It's the major hurdle in approaching it that the two forms of play and s tyles are just imcompatible. Besides that, I like controllers, and I'm lazy and don't want to get up and run around just to play a game. But with Microsoft leading the way, a company that consistently manages to shove its way into the spotlight in everything it does, and alot of major inhouse developers on their payroll, I really think they have a chance to make it work. There's already talk of bundling the Natal with all future console releases. Hopefully it becomes more than just a novelty, as something like that has the power to change more than just gaming, if it manages to at all, but the nature of all user interface - that's where it will really shine, and more than likely the real reason I'm excited about it.

Either way, I recommend everyone go and watch the E3 2009 Microsoft press conference (it's over 2 hours long unfortunately and is right at the end) and see just what I'm talking about. It's really something. That kid Milo will blow you away. It's almost kind of scary and brings to mind every sci-fi computers-taking-over-the-world scenario ever written.

The old way will never die, as gaming is more than about trying to imitate life, the nature of gaming requires that it be just that - a game. Not a simulation.

Time will tell how this all ends up, but they're behind it all the way and it's going to make an impact regardless.