Word: microsoft
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Microsoft people may or may not be geniuses, but they're definitely geniuses at figuring out who the geniuses in the room are and then doing what they're doing. Today at E3, Microsoft announced a new technology that, like the Wii, uses motion-sensing to control video games. But it may just be better than the Wii. In fact it may just kill the Wii. (See the top 10 video games...
...Nintendo folks have sold about as many Wiis as Microsoft and Sony have sold Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s put together. They are geniuses...
...really tried to, Microsoft probably could have come up with a decent knockoff of the Wii controller. But instead they - meaning Don Mattrick, the head of Microsoft's interactive-entertainment division and the former head of Electronic Arts - decided that instead of imitating Nintendo, Microsoft would try to leapfrog past Nintendo. "We did explore whether we thought a motion-based controller was a true next step or a transition step," Mattrick says. "And for us, we decided it was a transition step." So about 18 months ago he started up Project Natal...
...Microsoft tends to name its internal projects after cities. Natal is a city in Brazil, which is where Alex Kipman, one of the key engineers on Project Natal, comes from. What Mattrick and Kipman decided to try to do was to get rid of the controller altogether. They wanted a technology that would enable a gamer to control the game just by moving his or her arms and legs and other body parts. The gamer would become the controller. (Read "Why Video Games Are an Excellent Economic Indicator...
...problem with the Sony EyeToy and its ilk was that they were lame. They didn't track your motions very well, or precisely, and there were no good games for them. That's not surprising, because building a system of this kind is a very hard technological problem. But Microsoft's Xbox division has a somewhat different corporate culture than the rest of the company - it's nimbler and friendlier to innovation - and Kipman and his colleagues are extremely clever. Which is good, because they were going to have to innovate like hell to make this work...