The New Frontier

Project Natal on Vimeo.

At E3 ’09, various platform’s announced their peripherals catered to the motion-obsessed gaming populace. Sony officially announced its ‘imitation’ to the Wii’s IR sensitive wand while Microsoft, well, is entirely in a different level.

The surprisingly secretive Project Natal is finally out in the open, demonstrating to the few selected gaming journos what makes it tick. Through the vids and pics of numerous gaming sites, we can see the sheer technological brilliance Project Natal bestows upon the gaming world. It's the revolution the industry has been waiting for.

The Wii felt more of an evolutionary step on controller design rather than a revolutionary one -- a tangible barrier between the player and the game still existed.

With Microsoft’s new technology (through an Israel-based company, 3DV), we finally have the controller-less capacity to play. It pushes you to react when a ball rolls your way, when you're placed in the driver seat of a super-car, or when a technologically impressive A.I. realistically interacts with you.

The applications and possibilities of Project Natal are indeed limitless when compared to the restrictive nature of Nintendo's wand. It'd be quite intriguing how Microsoft will innovate a young gaming industry with such a technology.