Milo As You’ve Never Seen Him

Looks like IGN got to take Milo home, and when they did so, they also took the Milo project to its natural conclusion–voyeurism, drugs, and eventually jail. Obviously.

IGN's Milo

The Extended Project Milo Demo

- jinx

No New Xbox in 2010

Rumours have been flying after Steve Ballmer spoke about Project Natal at the Executive’s Club of Chicago (with a name like that I bet they all had cigars and whisky and sat in big squishy chairs, steepling their fingers while they talked) and many took from it that we’re launching an Xbox with Natal included sometime in 2010. Not so!

According to Aaron Greenberg, discussing with Kotaku earlier today, “We’re not going to be launching a new console any time soon [...] I really believe he was speaking about Project Natal. [...] We want to make sure people know that we’re excited about Project Natal, but we’re barely halfway through this generation. We’re happy with the Xbox 360, so there are no changes from that standpoint. For the time being, we’re really just showing a whole new category of gaming.”

Everyone got that?

- jinx

Project Natal Interview

Throughout the show I’ve had a few chances to hang out with Alex Kipman, who works on Project Natal, and Mariana convinced him we should do an interview, which is spot on. So we did.

- jinx

Miyamoto

Miyamoto is in the Xbox booth right now getting a demo of Project Natal. Most of us nerds just about fell over in awe. As one guy put it, “Beckham, Michele Trachtenberg, whatever. But Miyamoto? OH MY GOD.”

Project Natal – Let’s meet Milo

World meet Milo, Milo meet the world!

Bar none, for me this was the highlight of the Microsoft presentation yesterday.  The ability for “Milo” to recognise your face, voice and emotions … it boggles the mind all the applications this has, even beyond gaming. Let me throw one out there … a companion for isolated elderly people.  Would be great to hear your thoughts on the potential of this.

-Krafty Kid

Project Natal Video

This secret was kept tighter than my brother’s wallet.  We saw this for the first time today, same as everyone. No controller required,  just your body. With  full body motion sensor, you are the controller. Good news for me, no more broken controllers from heated gaming sessions …

Check out when the kid in video scans his skateboard into the game. Totally rad. Yeah the pun may be lame but Project Natal isn’t.

PS. Voice and Facial recognition. Are you serious!

Microsoft E3 – Project Natal

Don Mattrick looks so much more normal and well adjusted than I would have expected. His hair is so shiny!

Maybe I should listen. He’s talking about controllers, motion, etc. New controller? Oh “Can we make YOU the controller? Yes we can.”

And lights out. Video  on.

No controller required. Kids walks into living room. Starts doing kung fu to the screen. Cut to family playing a racing game. No wheel, no controller. Girl holding out her arms as if steering. Dad gets up and mimes doing that thing to pull of the bolts of a tire, change it, bolt it back on.  Cut to little kid pretending to be a monster on the screen.  Two girls playing soccer.  Everything on the screen is following their movements.

Some kid just scanned his skateboard and pulled it into a skateboarding game. So he has his real board in the game? Nice.  Girl just walked up to the 360 and it signed into her profile with facial recognition. She’s video chatting with a friend who recommends an outfit for her, and she’s able to virtually try it on. Family plays a trivia game together. Ooh, they’re competing against another family over LIVE. Voice recognition so it knows who said the answer.

Verbal cues “Play movie.”

Wow. That’s new. Project Natal is the codename.

-jinx