The line to enter The Galen Center

In a recent post I mentioned going to a preview event for Microsoft Xbox 360′s “Project Natal”; although it was just a beta I was very impressed with what I saw and posted video footage I shot of Mr. Sean G testing out Natal doing his best Breakin’ rendition.

A few days later I received an email from Edelmen, Microsoft Xbox’s PR firm inquiring about the video (uh-oh), which they were excited about and wanted to use, but…asked that I edit and “blackout” the device like it was in the witness protection program since it was still in beta (whew). Considering what happened with Gizmodo’s Jason Chen, I immediately complied no questions asked and the subsequent edit with their help ended up receiving over 100K views, which is why I presume a few months later I was asked if I could come out to LA for E3 to attend the launch event for Project Natal featuring a performance by Cirque Du Soliel. You better believe they didn’t have to ask me twice! I was flattered they even considered me and psyched to have the opportunity to witness and experience their huge kickoff event for E3!

On June 13th that opportunity came…

I didn’t know what to expect as we made our way to USC’s Galen Center, strangely enough on the way there the ‘official’ name of Project Natal, “Kinect” was being spread over Twitter and the web, which I presume was a slight hiccup for Microsoft, but did nothing to take away the ‘air of excitement’ amongst the 3000+ attendees. The only downer for guests was that everyone was barred from using phones, cameras or other electronic devices inside; although many were doing their best to sneak vid and pics.

Performer throwing his 'set' up. "Jefferson Boulevard Cirques!"

As guests entered the venue each were given white ponchos with shoulder pads to wear, adding to the mystery, making me smirk at what started to look like a procession.

At the end the shoulder pads glowed and changed colors, which although brief, was impressive to see.

If not the biggest launch in Microsoft’s history, Project Natal is the most ambitious. The interpretation of Project Natal is conveyed by Cirque Du Soliel through a story about the ‘evolution of humans and communication’. To sum it up swiftly: In Cirque-style a boy sitting on the couch with his family drops in from the ceiling watching an exotic and indigenous-like group chanting, beating on drums. He rides an electronic elephant, (which for a second I thought was real) climbs a rock mountain while the chanting and drum beats grow more intense, the rock on the peak turned into a huge ball with the Xbox logo, and on a large screen he connects with his ‘avatar’, which mirrors his every move. He asks, “What is this?”, and is then revealed the name, “KINECT” (Picture provided by Microsoft)

The introduction of Kinect, formerly known as Project Natal

The show then went into a sensory overload of Kinect demonstrations performed by a “family” in a living room that rotated upside down with them sitting in a couch ending up on the ceiling, add to that a young girl walking upside down across the ceiling made it seem horror-movie like. (I was waiting for the girl to stop mid-walk and see her head spin around 360º!)

There was a montage of games played during the performance – beach volleyball, hurdles, javelin, even a “Star Wars” game with gesture-controlled use of ‘The Force’ and light sabers. Throughout it all there was a ‘fun for the whole family feel and theme’. There seemed to be a big push with “Kinectimals“, one of the games shown where the kids used Kinect to train and play with virtual pets on-screen; after the whirlwind of a performance, guests were given stuffed (replica) animals with specially-coded tags for the game as they exited the venue. You can peep the show on Xbox’s site and their YouTube page.

From The Galen Center Lobby to the afterparty…

The post event was held at LoftSEVEN in The Haas Building, a modernly lavish penthouse and rooftop set amongst beautiful views of Downtown Los Angeles with sounds delectably curated by DJ Lady Sha. This was where guests got a chance to test out (to my count) five of the upcoming titles.

Everyone seemed to have a great time, especially testing out the games. I know I had a blast, so much so that I didn’t do a good job of documenting the event!

Here’s a quick vid snippet of it:

One of the games people enjoyed the most was Harmonix‘s Dance Central. Sean was adamant that it was inspired by his moves from the initial video and I know Sam’s gonna kill me, but check her doing the damn thang in heels and dudes playing at the end, this is going to be a popular one at this year’s holiday parties:

Whether there was lag time experienced or not during people’s game play, the overall opinion I gathered that night was Kinect is truly impressive and next level. I know some core gamers are rolling their eyes at Kinect and the family orientation of the games being shown so far, but this is Microsoft throwing their hat in the ring against Nintendo and the Wii. Widening their audience doesn’t mean the core gamer will be neglected, some may feel alienated and scoff at Kinect, but I’m sure titles will be developed with this market in mind with traditional control and/or Kinect ready. Microsoft’s ‘big picture’ game is about expanding market share and I think they’re doing a brilliant job at playing it with Kinect. The marketing begins with the product, and Kinect is definitely a game changer, a (#)sneak peek into the future. The convergence of technology, gaming, entertainment and communication. This is Microsoft innovating it’s often complained-about user-experience, which will soon be ‘going in’ at Apple with some straight up ‘Minority Report-type’ of mind-blowing ish, the next evolution in the human-to-computer interface. It may seem all fun and games right now, but Kinect is obviously just the beginning of what to expect. We should all be looking forward to the innovation that continues to develop from this technology…

All in all the trip was incredible! Shout outs to everyone I got to see and meet during this trip: Reds, Lyola, Peter, Samantha, Sean, Makeup by Mel, Dan, Steve Holcomb, Heidi and her family, Kim, Kizzy Kay, Lindsey, Lady Sha, Bee Nguyen, Dagan Ryan, Greg Johnsen, Stephen Malbon, Neran Dhas, D Payne and Anna Maria. To those I didn’t get to see, next time around…

My sincerest thanks you’s to Microsoft Xbox and Edelman – Carrie Morris, Jessica Lange and Chrystina Woody – thanks for being so hospitable. Loved the ‘LA essentials gift bag’ with sunscreen and Sprinkles Cupcakes!!!

Last week the gif+d invited me to tag along to attend a preview event for Microsoft Xbox 360′s forthcoming “Project Natal“, which is the code name for their “controller-free gaming and entertainment experience”. (Thanks for taking me Sam!) I was super-psyched to have the opportunity to witness it up close since I’ve been hearing and seeing all the hype surrounding it.

For those of you familiar, you already know. For those who don’t, simply put it’s Xbox throwing their hat in the ring against Nintendo’s Wii in an attempt to broaden their audience beyond the hardcore gamer. After seeing it live, it looks like “Project Natal” will easily accomplish that goal and could quite possibly be considered Microsoft’s game changer. This device will not only revolutionize how people interact with video games, but could also be considered a ‘peek’ into the future of how we’ll interact with computers.

Before I go into explaining “Project Natal”, kudos goes out to Microsoft and the planning team for this event. The gift bag included the Xbox 360-branded Flip Mino HD Cam you see pictured above, which I thought was a brilliant idea in giving guests the opportunity to engage with the product as well as document and promote it with ‘user-generated’ content.

As you can see from the picture above, “Project Natal” is an add-on peripheral camera/sensor that can detect everything from a person’s face, voice and body. Whether a male or female stood in front of the sensor and began to test the demo, the camera identified, and on-screen there was proper avatar representation. It was too noisy to check out it’s voice recognition capabilities, but all guests were able to test the interactive game play with a ‘dodgeball-like’ demo. As each took their turns, the sensor recognized their movements, and those same movements were emulated and performed by the avatar in-game. You wave your hand, the avatar waves. You kick, it kicks. You duck, it ducks. Some felt that the motion detection wasn’t perfect, but reps mentioned that it was an early version and they just wanted to show how the technology works, but from what I saw, it was good enough to see the future. My words obviously aren’t going to properly describe how much fun the “Project Natal” experience really is, but you can check this video footage I took of our friend Sean messing around with it doing his best rendition of “America’s Next Best Dance Crew”:

I apologize for the low-quality video, but hopefully you’ll get the gist of “Project Natal” and why there is strong opinion that it will change the face of gaming. I know I said interactive computing too, but think about it, this device recognizes you, just think of all the possibilities. Technology keeps innovating as far ‘into the future’ as our imagination takes us and Microsoft seems to have their hands on something that just might take us there.