‘Touch’ seems so… Last month…

At the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year, E3, much of the hype was around new controller systems from the usual suspects. Two of the manufactures, Sony and Nintendo, presented impressive, but ultimately incremental wand based methods with which to control your home console. Microsoft however took a different route, and one that demonstrates when they put their minds to it they can come up with innovation to match anyone.

Microsoft presented ‘Controller-less Gaming’ – a motion tracking system which accurately maps the gamer’s motions into the game itself. ‘Project Natal’…

These give you the idea:

What is impressive, and the reason why initial reaction of everybody who watches this is that it is staged or just plain sci-fi, is the sensitivity to which they can achieve this – not only can it detect a body moving in the distance but it can detect tiny movements and even recognise facial features and gestures.

Project Natal also explores a solution for allowing ‘objects’ to move in and out of the virtual world, rather clumsy in comparison to some of the other subtleties, but a scanner is included to pass drawings from the real world to the virtual one. So ironically I guess a good old fashioned paper and pencil is required to get the most of out of it then…

Peter Molineaux, of Populous and Fable fame, has applied this technology beautifully to demonstrate just how this might play out and why it is indeed revolutionary rather than evolutionary. Meet Milo…

Time will tell just how effective this particular device is – however they are now on the way to game developers and are been demonstrated to a sceptical public and press with impressive responses.

Undoubtedly the first time most people will knowingly experience this technology is gaming, however Project Natal is most interesting when you take it away from this context. I don’t believe gaming interfaces are what Microsoft’s ambitions are here – I believe they are making a play for the interface and the method with which we interact with it more generally. ‘Touch’ already seems confined and limiting, it feels niche and more akin to mobile than it does to revolutionary interfaces. Disappointingly I say that after only just getting an iPhone…

Elements of Project Natal have immediate application in a variety of real-life scenarios. The motion tracking could watch you around store and differentiate genuine interest in a product from presence at a display stand. It could watch crowds and identify groups or individuals who act suspiciously, or watch a bus-stop to identify the ‘undesirables’ hanging around. The voice tracking and facial recognition could replace swipe cards at security doors or replace tickets for a play that you’ve bought on-line…

Ultimately this type of development moves us significantly closer to being able to link the online identity to the real-life identity and so share information and experience…

So, next time you pass a security camera ask yourself whether it knows your name and address, your online activity, which play you watched last night, your latest tweets and what you favourite Rock Band track is… Because it just might…