Robert Bach, Microsoft President of Entertainment and Devices, started his talk with a bounding run up the steps to the stage (must be a Microsoft thing). We found out that his favorite movie is the Shawshank Redemption. He likes Star Wars, too, but didn’t seem to want to talk about Avatar. He came bearing commercials for Microsoft, which he described as “not commercials for Microsoft.”
That’s okay. One of his commercials, for a new Xbox add-on called Project Natal, was jaw-dropping. Microsoft’s crimes against the creativity of humanity are legion. They include plague after plague of poorly designed fonts, the quashing of non-Microsoft technological innovation, and software interface styling that feels like the electronic equivalent of a blue ballpoint Bic writing on a manila envelope, forever. But in the last few years, Microsoft has been turning out some truly forward-thinking products. The Surface table was one such head-turning moment; Project Natal is sure to be the next.
Natal, the result of what Bach calls “deep research” in interface design, combines a camera and microphone with motion capture, facial recognition, and voice recognition technology. The device tracks points on the player’s body and translates this into on-screen motion. Stand in front of your television and kick; your on-screen avatar will kick. Motion through the virtual space of a video game—historically, heavily mediated through the pushing of arbitrarily meaningful buttons—is about to become much more like moving through real space. You will move your arm to move your arm.
Natal also recognizes voice commands, and it can identify individual players from session to session, using facial recognition software. Lots of smart guys with PhDs and James Dysonesque British accents worked on it.
I can’t help but see this as an answer to the Wii. Natal turns it up a notch on Nintendo, finally delivering a completely unencumbered, gesture-based gaming interface. Bach hinted that this technology may be under development for PC and mobile platforms as well. While it’s harder to imagine using something like this with a phone, putting Natal on the PC could open up a whole new world of software interaction.
Bach was bullish on the future of the entertainment industry, and sees a future populated with hybrid multimedia objects: books, movies, music, and games combined into one. This will come about through changes on three fronts: consumers, who increasingly have multiple screens and expect content to be available everywhere; creators, who will conceive of and develop new kinds of content; and the “canvas” itself, as new technologies afford new opportunities for creation.
Notably, he predicted that the artistic creative process will adopt characteristics of the software development cycle as a new generation of digital artists emerge. Would-be creatives were advised to learn as much math and science as possible to take advantage of the opportunities this new entertainment landscape provides.
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