Microsoft’s Xbox Project Natal: From gaming to PC

Imagine you are reading your favorite magazine on the web, and as you are about to turn the page with a lazy hand gesture, a big, annoying, full page advertisement featuring a famous movie star is smiling at you and whispering your name to get your attention.

The magazine is intelligent, and knows who your favorite actor/actress is. Yes, you are signed in with Facebook Connect. You can’t help staring at her/him in admiration. Ok, for the post’s sake, let’s say it’s a she. And it’s Scarlett Johansson.

Scarlett is showing you a new cellphone model, and when you least expect it, she’s already gotten your undivided attention (pretty soon). How could she have known that seconds ago you were doing some comparison shopping for that exact cellphone? That’s the power of retargeting.

All you need to do is stretch your hand to take it, follow the link to the landing page and you’re ready to complete the transaction.

Project Natal: full-body motion user interface

What may sound like a prophetic vision of a distant future by science-fiction novelist Philip K. Dick, could become our near future reality if Microsoft Xbox’s Project Natal will succeed in revolutionizing user interface in day-by-day computer usage. Project Natal is full body motion control: hands-free, no remotes, no controllers, no joypads!

Xbox Project Natal could be Microsoft’s final blow to Nintendo Wii’s domination in console wars. Now it’s not only Nintendo’s turn, because, as every gamer knows, why go for a single hit when you can score a combo? Project Natal is a menace also to Sony’s vision of Playstation 3 as the only center of home entertainment in our living rooms.

Project Natal from the Xbox to the PC

From casual gaming to every day PC usage, ensuring a higher degree of interactivity and optimal user experience could be the next step on the road to mass informatization. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told CNET that Project Natal’s camera was not just intended for games, “but for media consumption as a whole, and even if they connect it up to Windows PCs for interacting in terms of meetings, and collaboration, and communication.”

Will man be ready to abandon his best friend, the mouse? Productivity could be increased by the new interface, and the same could happen to the way we traditionally experience the web: new website designs, new interactively enhanced rich media ads, new ways of integrating social media in everyday life.

Are you dreaming of a future of physical interface to virtuality, or you realistically think that homo technologicus isn’t willing to move all his muscles to achieve what a simple keystroke can accomplish?

For more on the subject, view Project Natal on YouTube or visit Project Natal’s Official website.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Cool Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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