Is the Wii finished?

Neo-Natal?

I'm sure most of us have seen the new piece of tech that Microsoft whipped out yesterday at their press conference. Motion control without a controller because apparently a controller is a barrier that keeps people out of games. So they brought out Kudo and his gang to show off a few tech demos.

They seemed very Wii-esque, much like Wii sports when everyone was crazy about that (and most of the Wii owners that is still all they play because Wii has crap games) They are trying to coin the phrase "The only experience you need is life experience" Basically you don't need any gaming skill other than your ability to control your body and do the motions.

They showed a few trailers with people doing full video chat, using face and voice recognition and navigating the menus with a swipe of their hands instead of a flick of the thumbstick. Its an interesting twist if it works but I still think that it will fall to a niche market of casual "gamers" because I'll be honest for me the only way to play video games is with a controller in your hand, its worked for the past 20 years, why fix what aint broke?

After they showed all of the tech demos out comes Peter Moleneaux director of Lionhead studios with this huge pitch about this new software he's created for use with Microsoft's new piece of equipment. The name for this project is "Milo". Its a character created in real time by the console that, with Natal, can read your face, voice, and body language and communicate with you as a real person would. Now they didn't show this demo live at the conference, but they had recorded a video to show.

I know what you're thinking, probably the same thing I was. Its just acted out with the responses generated by a programmer because there is no possible way this kind of thing could ever work. Well I agree. The demo is going to be shown at E3 "behind closed doors" leading me to believe that it is a hoax. Of course if it's not an elaborate scam... well who knew Skynet would start as an adolescent British kid?

More on E3 as the week continues!