Look Ma, No Hands! Microsoft Alters Gaming Experience

Look Ma, No Hands! Microsoft Alters Gaming Experience

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By Michele Masterson, ChannelWeb

8:11 AM EDT Tue. Jun. 02, 2009

For those of you who don't know an avatar from an apple, Microsoft has good news for you. On Monday, the company unveiled Project Natal, a system that lets users play without a controller through face recognition that is captured on a 3-D motion capture camera.

Introduced at the E3 video conference in Los Angeles, the Project Natal camera can turn 3-D body movements onto a screen for interactive games and other features. The product will work with all incarnations of the Xbox 360 console.

Movie director Steven Spielberg is a fan of Project Natal.

"This is a technology that recognizes not only your thumb or wrist but recognizes your entire being," Spielberg said in an interview with the BBC. "The technology knows who you are and instantly personalizes the gaming experience."

Spielberg, who is currently making video games for EA, said he is also writing games for the new platform.

"[This] sort of changes the paradigm of what I would have written for something last week," he said.

Project Natal is still being birthed--Microsoft is still developing games and has not disclosed pricing or a release date.

"This is going to bring people who are intimidated or scared of the technology," Spielberg said. "This is going to allow people who don't usually play video games to access a whole new world."