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The Inside Story of Microsoft's 'Project Natal'
Lanxon writes "Wired has published a lengthy behind-the-scenes feature documenting the inception, development and technological struggles of Microsoft's Project Natal, now known as Kinect. The feature is the result of conversations the magazine had with a number of key developers and researchers behind the project, and unprecedented access to Microsoft Research in a number of countries, over the course of three years."
“Since the dawn of time, humanity’s long journey has led us to countless discoveries, Yet with each leap forward for civilisation, more people have been left behind. But our quest has taken us to a completely new horizon. History is about to be rewritten. This time human beings will be at the centre -- and the machines will be the ones that adapt. After five million years of evolution, is it possible that the future of humanity is humanity itself?”
That the article repeats verbatim such a quote from Microsoft's presentation without even a slight nod to the gross self-aggrandization clued me to the fact that the whole piece is yet another corporate advertisement disguised as news.
I mean, in addition to the whole story starting with an emergency meeting on mid 2007 about the need to "reimagine a new direction for the Xbox" yet failing to point out it was all due to the runaway success of the Wii. It actually sticks out like a sore thumb to see these VPs panicking about something that the article refuses to acknowledge exists.
Microsoft was caught faking their demos for their Eye Toy style motion controls for the past two E3s.
And first had reports constantly talk of horrible lag between arm movements and response.
You can't play games while sitting down.
You need to have a relatively large area completely clear in whatever room you are using it in.
There are lighting issues that cause the system to have trouble recognizing motion.
There are clothing issues that cause the system to have trouble recognizing motion.
It doesn't recognize fine motions like finger actions.
It only supports two players.
It should be obvious why Microsoft was forced to fake their demos and so far there has been almost zero real world demos outside of carefully controlled showings with people Microsoft is certain are going to hype the product.
Not that any of that really matters. There isn't any game even remotely interesting or fun that Microsoft has show for the system. When Nintendo showed off the Wii they were confident enough to let everyone at the very first E3 where it was shown play it and had games that both gamers and non-gamers really wanted to play.
Most likely the only people who will end up buying this shoddy tech from Microsoft are the same ones who jumped on the dead HD-DVD format.