As the title says Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all publicly announced and demoed some kind of new motion control accessory. Nintendo was the least exciting so we’ll start there.

Nintendo released the Your Shape fitness system. The ridiculous popularity of Wii Fit most likely means that unless they release this game way behind schedule with terrible bugs Your Shape will be a game that we will all be at least socially familiar with after Christmas this year, but a camera that can recognize shapes isn’t really anything new. That being said the camera that comes with the game opens up a very large window to the future. All of the sudden important questions like camera resolution, color and light depth, and the Wii’s computing capacity start to have very important answers because if the camera is good enough and the Wii smart enough some very interesting games could be on the way, now I’m walking a bit into Project Natal’s domain so I will save further speculation till later. Oh yeah and now maybe all those cheap plastic Wii remote props that you bought will have a real purpose other than stimulating your nonexistent imagination

Now on to Sony. Sony’s presentation was very different from the other two. Sony didn’t have a finished product to show and one of the first things they said was not to look too hard at it cause it’s a prototype, but to make up for this they did the whole presentation as a live demo which I thought was rather impressive. To be honest I’d rather see a prototype work well when tested in a live non-laboratory setting than a sleek looking piece of plastic and a bunch of proof of concept videos. Also of note was how gracefully the presenters avoided giving the new motion controller a name. As far as the actual demonstration it was rather impressive. Anton (The guy running the motion controller) had obviously played the games before, but he was still playing rather than performing something that was rehearsed. The games responded very well to the users movement. I liked Sony’s archery mini game better than Nintendo’s but the trick I see in Sony’s motion control is that many things they shows require a whole second controller. Price and connectivity will show if this is a better model than the Wii’s Nunchuk. Another noteworthy thing about this new motion controller is that Sony already has the Playstation Eye accessory so (as demonstrated) the Playstation can show the user(s) in the picture and use the controller(s) to more precisely track movement. An interesting gimmick maybe, but also another potential untapped resource for sales. The technology is so new at this time that my optimistic side sees a bunch of great possibilities and my cynical side sees a lot of things that could make this just another worthless accessory.

Now to the winner of best in show for the new motion control technology category, Project Natal from Microsoft for the Xbox 360. If this presentation didn’t get you excited about the future on games on the Xbox you really have no business in console gaming. Unlike the other two manufactures this presentation was about as scripted and rehearsed as it could have been as evidenced by the (admittedly neat) almost instant transformation of two people and a few pillows into an elephant stencil. Despite the scripted feel, the demos presented for Project Natal were really impressive. SDK’s should be at developers now so overall Natal was another showing of a really neat new technology with lots of possibility.

You might be wondering why I am so excited over Natal, what makes this any different from Your Shape you might ask. Well in comes Lionhead Studios with their Milo demonstration. This is mind blowing, the combination of controller-less interaction, intelligent AI, an electronic voice that sounds real, natural language interaction, and OMG the almost instant picture recognition demonstrated….. Yah my mind just exploded again and I’ve probably seen this video 20 times already. The dreamy not so impressive announcement video and the not especially stand out live product demonstration just turned into one of the most interesting gaming technologies I’ve seen in a very long time.

If you hit the YouTube channel for Project Natal then you can see even more. There’s lots of people playing the ricochet game and oh well that proves it works for all body types. The really impressive thing is the racing game, a small difference in foot position and people are off driving in a beautifully rendered game. Full racing control, hands held out like a steering wheel, and full graphic support. I can’t believe they didn’t include this in the live demonstration. The only part that keeps beating at my cynical side is the mysterious lack of any video of the special guests that got to meet Milo after the press conference. Hopefully they will surface if they don’t soon I’ll have to assume that the meet Milo demonstration didn’t go over very well.

Here’s a link dump of video clips for eye candy:

Nintendo:
YouTube link to Your Shape Video

Sony:
YouTube link to Motion Control Live Demonstration

Microsoft:
Official Xbox Project Natal Site With mind blowing Lionhead Studios Demo Video

Project Natal YouTube Profile where lots of try Project Natal videos are uploaded