Elephants and Acrobats at Microsoft Kinect

Three Kiwi views from the world premiere of Kinect.

NZGamer.com was on the floor at Microsoft's Kinect presentation ahead of E3. We bring you our initial impressions from Los Angeles.


Shaun: Let me just say this, Microsoft sure know how to put on a show.

After the wait to get inside we were delightfully greeted and ushered inside, with constant voices telling us we’re going to love the upcoming experience. Experience. The best word that describes what we saw – nay – were part of.

And part of it we were. Wearing the white ponchos supplied to the audience, we walked into the heart of the Galen Center, were we found that we were the (what we thought were unlucky) media located on the ground floor, standing, while many were seated around the hall. It turns out the floor was the show. Cirque du Soleil performers dressed as ‘tree-people’ interacted with us, and at some stage we were all thrust directly into the performance itself.

Our white ponchos lit up green when the newly named Kinect was announced. An impressive life-sized hand-created elephant walked across the floor, and massive screens lit up around us.

It all seemed lush, magical and somewhat mysterious. It was hard to try and work out how this could represent a gaming device. After a bit of an introduction about the history of mans’ creations, we were introduced to our Kinect family. It’s hard to tell where the all the feelings we had from the performance stopped and the Kinect demos started – a lot of the time they intertwined – the Kinect family and their living-room styled enclosure was tipped upside down, children walked along the roof, and the ever-so-happy family played a range of Kinect games.

I won’t go through all of the games again – Sam and Angus have us covered for that, but the big question for me was how well will Kinect work once you have it in your living room? It was clear that the demos were pre-produced and a choreographed to the timings of the family. But will there be any delays with interactions when fed through the technology? Will it pick up our bodies as perfectly as it did in the demos? Will it distinguish between our family members and friends to know who is taking part? Will the Star Wars lightsaber demo – which, when first shown, garnered an excited chatter throughout everyone around us – perform as we saw? All huge questions that will need to be answered to find out just how interactive and intuitive the system will be.

Games like Dance Central, a Yoga inspired one, and Kinectimals will be huge selling points for the system – but it will be interesting to know if it’ll be able make the jump to the ‘hardcore’ games. No doubt we’ll find out a lot about that tomorrow morning at the Microsoft E3 Press Conference.

While we saw Kinect in action, we were very much there for the experience – another surprising world premiere experienced by NZGamer.com. More from LA soon.

Angus: After a couple of days in sunny LA, it was easy to forget that we were actually here in Schwarzenegger-land to do work. However there was no better wake-up call than our first taste of E3 madness via Microsoft's Kinect presentation this evening.

In order to showcase the Xbox 360's upcoming motion capture technology, Microsoft teamed up with the acrobatic awesomeness of Cirque du Soleil. The outcome was nothing short of spectacular, featuring Avatar-like backdrops, hypnotising dancing and light-up ponchos. Truthfully, it did seem a tad extravagant for technology that we are already aware of. However the overall effect did encapsulate the whole “human” and plain old back-to-basics control system that Microsoft's Kinect is hoping to produce.

Media from all over the world found themselves in an interactive theatrical experience that was a pleasant change from the typical boring speech driven conferences that we have all grown accustomed to. For starters, half of us didn't even get seats. Instead the showroom floor was filled with hundreds of members of the media dressed in unflattering white ponchos that were issued to us at the door. Walking into the main room we were confronted by jungle back-drops and a family of three sitting, pointing and waving on a sofa, suspended from the ceiling. Fake rocks, jungle drum beats and a mystical overhead circular screen with water drops on it completed the set.

To compliment these mad props, the Cirque du Soleil troupe had also beautifully choreographed an entire show specifically for Project Natal. Scantily-clad, playful wood-nymph like creatures passed through the crowds, occasionally grabbing some surprised audience member for a quick shanty or jig. Throughout, there was a huge emphasis on crowd interaction, making us move around, yelling at each other and basically being encouraged to be primal. It was a beautiful reference to the whole “you are the controller” angle that Microsoft are targeting. No more complicated controllers with a dozen buttons – it's just you, moving your body in an intuitive manner to manipulate the game.

On top of the crazy shenanigans of Cirque du Soleil, there was also a typical family of four on hand to demonstrate how Project Natal works. Despite some impressive acting, it was clear that all of the demos were pre-recorded as the timing didn't quite match up. But we saw little Timmy kick a ball around with his dad, the mother do some relaxing yoga, the daughter race down a water-slide in a raft, while dad... ended up looking like he had had a little bit too much valium that morning. But every demonstration conveyed that it could really work in real time, detecting head, arm and leg motion as if you were in the game yourself.

But although the technology might be efficient, it all comes down to the games. To be honest, few of the titles shown to us captured my attention and ended up feeling more like add-on tools rather than complete stand-alone games. There was Kinect Animals where you play and fondle a virtual tiger or puma. A dancing demo where the entire family learnt and performed dance moves to some phat beats. None of them looked like they had any real depth other than to show that Kinect is a family pleaser in short bursts.

However Microsoft did present a one minute clip on an up-coming Kinect Star Wars title, where the player wields a lightsaber and takes on Stormtroopers and even Darth Vader at some point. Although it was brief, it was clever of Microsoft to throw in some obvious fan-favourite material that the crowd appreciated. Will a Star Wars game be enough to convince the media that Kinetic is more than a kiddie-toy? Maybe we'll know more after the Microsoft press conference tomorrow.

Sam:We now feel more or less woven into the fabric of E3, I would say. That might sound like a bit of a strange sentiment - but there it is. I suppose I could have said “immersed.” Having come away from Microsoft's Project Natal Experience (that is to say, the Kinect Experience - turns out some rumours are true) with a few sights and sounds to truly remember, we can see that this new control system for the Xbox 360 is going to be something pretty special.

Wearing silver ponchos with enormous plastic shoulder pads, we found oursevles standing in a massive amphitheatre surrounded by seats - at first, it looked like we were the show. It also looked like we'd be standing up to watch. After two hours standing around on a concrete floor, we started to think the lucky buggers sitting down had the premium spots, and that we had some kind of NZ media pleb-class. However, it was we who got to take a romp around with the cast of Cirque du Soleil. So there.

They moved among us, cracking some people up, freaking some people out, and encouraging interaction. Other optical wonderments included a family suspended from a couch in midair, a rocky outcrop leading up to a massive screen, and Xbox avatars mingling in a magic forest setting. The key was that once you got inside, there was something to look at from every angle. You might even say one had to turn THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY degrees to catch it all.

The Cirque troupe got me up on a little stage in front of a camera disguised as a bush and following a bit of a performance, I found my face planted on one of the screens - easily three foot by three. It was actually quite scary. For a spell before the lights dimmed, Angus and Shaun were encouraged into a little bit of hands-across-the-amphitheatre; was it dance? Was it some kind of summoning? I stood back and did some real work while they flounced about, and then we saw the goods. Someone close by mentioned that they felt, in their silver poncho (oh, did I mention the shoulder pads flashed?) like they were a Scientologist. And I have to admit, the way the entire crowd drew forward to watch the unveiling felt a little cultish!

What really stuck out from the voiceover introducing the system was that "now, the machine will be the one to adapt." It made sense, seeing the kind of vibe Microsoft had gone for in their presentation: a fusion of nature and technology. Following the delivery of a boy by elephant (fake elephant) to the aforementioned rocky outcrop, we watched him ascend, playing with his Xbox 360 controller at each level of the structure. Again, this was fairly symbolic: the machine's slow but steady gathering of its share of the market. But when he got to the top? The controller went away. Yeah, you get it.

We watched the boy get to grips with an on screen avatar, and although we are fairly certain in actuality he was acting out the scene he had rehearsed, the intention of the technology was very clear: you move you arm, your avatar's arm moves. Naturally, what this means for videogaming is quite mind boggling, but this isn't necessarily new information.

Later a family showed us through a few highlights; games where everything is based on movement. This, too, tied in nicely to the overall feel of the show. I don't need to go on explaining it, but that hands on, interactive, all around experience was very clear. They played racing games, steering with invisible wheels. They used their appendages to collect tokens as they hurtled along through jungle wonderlands. The "Dad" of the pack slayed Stormtroopers with his lightsaber, ostensibly holding it and swinging it as though he were Skywalker himself.

I must say I wasn't really struck until the "Son" played Dance Central: this, it seems, could be Kinect's secret weapon. I have played games like this on the Wii, and holding a controller really does change the way it feels. The game looked smooth and responsive, and we should all look forward to how this comes together. No more mat for all those DDR fiends!

For the kids there was plenty on offer - and for mums, too. Kinectimals featured a cutsey set of baby big cats - the tiger, the panther - and the girl who displayed this one for us got her cub mewling and nuzzling as she patted and played with it. The "Mum" was big into her yoga/tai chi simulator - every bend, jump and Epic Lotus or whatever they're called, faithfully rendered on screen.

There is an element here of making up ground. We all know who dominates that family and child-friendly market, but Kinect could easily turn that around. The show was clearly designed to make a whole set of hardened game journos sit up and take notice. It had the lot: a shock and awe display of technological might, a powerful voiceover, a world in which to anchor the story, and funny bark-covered tree people.

We are running in tight little circles in our LA hotel room, eager to get out there and see what else this show has to offer. It starts proper in two days, but between now and then we have a couple more sneaky little presentations, including Microsoft's press briefing tomorrow morning. If more Kinect info is announced here, you'll be the first to know.

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