Elecrtonic Arts showed off some cool new games like EA MMA, and a pretty neat looking demo of Saboteur that was intriguing to say the least. Ubisoft had a less than stellar presentation. With comedian Joel McHale hosting the press conference, it started weird and stayed that way. However, Ubisoft made up for their host selection by showing an amazing world premiere trailer of Assassin's Creed 2 to end their time on stage.
Microsoft was the first to grace the stage today and they set the bar some where in the ozone layer. They unveiled details on Forza Motorsport 3, Crackdown 2, Left for Dead 2, Tony Hawk Ride, and the much anticipated and overdue Alan Wake. These games alone are reason enough for a massive nerdgasm, but this was just the tip of the iceberg for Microsoft's press conference. They went on to announce a very well kept secret known as, "Project Natal". This project has been, and will be, the talk of the video game world for this week and the rest of the foreseeable future.
Project Natal is a motion sensing camera that enables people to play games without the use of a controller. The camera tracks 3-dimensional body movements and has voice and face recognition. This means that by simply moving in front of your camera, your console will recognize you and automatically sign you into your gamer profile. It also has the ability to track the movements of your entire body in 3-D. This means if you're playing a fighting game such as Tekken, you would stand in front of your television and actually kick, punch, block, and dodge just as if you were fighting another human. There was a great moment during the presentation when they were showing off the abilities of the camera by playing a full body movement brick breaker type game, when the speaker called out the Wii by saying, "This isn't a game where you end up on the sofa just using some kind of preset waggle commands". This was more than enough for Microsoft to show and had just about everyone in the crowd buzzing, but then they brought out the President of Lionhead studios, Peter Molyneux.
What he showed the crowd today was quite possibly the most phenomonal and disturbing thing I've ever seen in a video game. He introduced a character named Milo. This character has the ability to recognize your face, voice, and emotions using the project natal camera. In the video he showed there is an actual human woman talking to Milo as if he was another human being, or a friend. Then they showed the truly remarkable thing the natal camera could do. In the game, Milo needs help with a school project and doesn't know how to draw a fish. The woman in the video draws a fish on a piece of paper, holds the paper up to the camera, the camera scans the picture, and Milo takes the picture and is now able to get on with his project. If you don't believe it, then just watch the video for yourself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxU_T7C4Ils.
It is no doubt that Microsoft stole the show with Project Natal and it will be extremely interesting to see where and how this type of technology will go from here. Hey, worst case scenario is Milo is the beginning of Skynet and the beginning of the machine's take over of the world.
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