Behold the motion-sensitive controller wars

The new motion-control system from Sony was announced at E3 on the heels of similar new technology from both Microsoft and Nintendo.

(Credit: Gamespot)

LOS ANGELES--Forget the console wars. We're in the motion-sensitive controller wars.

That much became clear Tuesday when, following on Monday's announcement by Microsoft that it was working on Project Natal, an impressive and complex full-body, hands-free motion-sensitive control system, both Nintendo and Sony revealed plans for new, advanced systems of their own.

Of course, Microsoft is the only real newcomer to this party. After all, Sony introduced the Eye Toy, a system that incorporated users' body movements into some games, years ago, and Nintendo's Wii vaulted to huge popularity on the strength of the innovative controls of its now-famous Wii-mote.

But over the last two days here at E3--the video game industry's most watched trade show--we've seen the three major video game hardware makers each up the ante in the race to provide consumers with much more intuitive ways to play games. And it's abundantly clear that what's really going on here is an aggressive play by each of the three companies to make their offerings more palatable to mainstream audiences, people who have traditionally not considered themselves gamers.

Microsoft's Project Natal is a hands-free, full-body sensing control system that can be used to play games, watch movies, do virtual painting, and much more. It appears to be easy to use, and quick to get going on. It's not known yet how much it will cost, or whether it will be bundled with the Xbox or sold as an accessory.

Nintendo's Wii Motion Plus, Vitality Sensor, confidence -- Tuesday, Jun 2, 2009" href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10254524-1.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-family: inherit; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 67, 127); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; ">newly announced improvements to Wii Motion Plus (see video below) is the most incremental of the three new systems. It takes the successful Wii-mote and adds a physical feedback system that lets users feel what they're doing, and it also allows for rotational motion in 3D space, such as spinning a skydiver's body around, which someone could do in "Wii Sports Resort," one of the games that Nintendo said would benefit from the new control system.

And Sony's new system is a set of wands with glowing orbs on top, that allow one-to-one motion like Nintendo's original Wii-mote, and which also give tangible physical feedback like the new Nintendo system.

With its massive success with the Wii, Nintendo would seem to have a leg up over its competitors. That's only because it doesn't have to work very hard to market its motion-sensitive control regimen at this point: everyone knows that the Wii controller is simple, easy to use, and responds to users' hand and arm gestures.

On the other hand, Nintendo's new technology also represents the smallest incremental change, meaning that it will actually be more difficult to convince would-be customers that its new offering is much different than what it had before.

By comparison, both Sony and Microsoft are offering something entirely new, and will certainly have little trouble building marketing campaigns around them once they're ready to go on sale. The answer to the question of when those technologies actually will go on sale is not yet known, and it's certainly a big question. Whoever is last to this game will probably have a hard time selling their technology as new and innovative.

Based on this new arms race, however, it's clear there is exactly one guaranteed winner: consumers. Until now, people who wanted a true motion-sensitive controller had only one choice: the Wii. Now--or rather, when the technology hits the market--people who are considering buying a video game console will be able to choose whichever system they want. Their choice, in the end, may well be able to come down to which games are on offer.

And one would have to expect, since it's very obvious that all three companies are now going after the truly mainstream audience, that all three will be pushing their developer partners hard to come up with more casual gaming experiences, and fast.

I really liked what I saw from all three companies, even though all three technologies are somewhat different.

I actually think that Microsoft's Project Natal (see video below) is the biggest leap forward, and offers consumers the widest user experience. And given that Microsoft has been making huge strides in developing its Xbox Live service in such a way that there are plenty of things for casual gamers, or even non-gamers, to do, I suspect that Natal will end up being a real winner for the Xbox platform.

That said, the Xbox is also seen in the wider world, I think, as a much harder-core gaming console, as is the PS3. So, it was crucial for both Sony and Microsoft to come up with something for the casual gamer, and now. Whether they can change the perception of their consoles as geared to the hard-core is something I think will take some time. On the other hand, both companies are surely willing to throw a lot of marketing dollars at the problem, so I have faith those non-gamers out there will be seeing a lot of advertising geared at them.

Nintendo, meanwhile, has the opposite problem: it has to find a way to convince core gamers it has something to offer them. So I would imagine the company will be pushing its developer partners to incorporate its latest technology into more games geared to the "Halo" set.

Everyone wants to know about winners and losers, and I don't think we have any losers here. Whether we can crown winners yet is also unclear. I would have to say it's too early for that. But my sense is that there is plenty to be excited about here. And one thing that strikes me is that the technological innovations we've now seen from all three companies suggests that we're not about to see the next generation of consoles any time soon.

And why would we? With the new technology each company keeps putting out, we've already got three new systems, and we don't need to spend several hundred more dollars to get there.

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Speedy Opera 10 beta reconfigures as Web suite

Opera 10 has entered beta with the unstated goal of becoming more than a mere browser. Available for Windows,Mac, and Linux, the Norwegian program hopes to become a speedy utility--Turbo-charged, in their words--that handles browsing, e-mail, RSS, and torrents with robust features.

Improvements to Speed Dial give users more customization power than before.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The most obvious changes in Opera 10 are the new default skin, created by British designer Jon Hicks, and a revamped Tab bar. The skin, Opera says, will continue to evolve before Opera 10 is finalized. Double-click or pull down on the bar below the tabs and above the location bar and you get thumbnail previews of each tab. The previews are resizable, so users who want to see only a small sliver of a tab to identify it visually don't have to worry about sacrificing screen real estate. The bar doesn't remember your last position for it when manually adjusted and then closed by double-clicking, but it does remember when you restart Opera.

One change Opera has yet to make is to rejigger the location bar to perform "smart searches." Whereas Firefoxand Chrome have both forced their location bar search protocol to do this by default, Opera's still takes you to a search results page. This may not bother some users, but after spending the majority of the past few months on Firefox and Chrome, I found it mildly irritating.

Opera's revamped Tab Bar can show (or hide) tab previews.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

You'll have an easier time tweaking the look of Opera 10, with improvements to Speed Dial and toolbar customizations. Speed Dial has received a refresh. You can expand it to show as many as 25 Web sites and set a background image. You can also set it to never appear. Customization is easier, too. Right-click on any toolbar to reveal a Customize option. From there, you can hide a toolbar or a particular widget such as the search box, download, and change skins on the fly, add or remove buttons, and add or adjust Panels. Opera has had the features in Panels, such as Notes, for a long time.

In this version, though, they round them all up behind one unified sidebar interface. Notes, Bookmarks, History, and Transfers are standard, as is a Widgets option from which you can download more panels. These widgets include things like a Facebook interface, a to-do list, and a Google services manager.

In addition to improvements to the browser, users can create panels to manage to their e-mail, newsfeeds, and chat, as well as select default clients to manage those services outside of Opera. The Opera default e-mail client, however, should be noted as the slickest of the baked-in browser e-mail clients. The e-mail folder tree smoothly integrates in a collapsible panel, while message composition opens in a new browser tab. Combined with Opera's MyOpera synchronization service, it provides users with a full-featured e-mail and browsing experience.

Opera's had e-mail integration for a while, but this is the most seamless it's been.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Web developers will appreciate further improvements to Opera Dragonfly. In addition to the changes introduced in the alpha, developers can now edit the DOM and inspect HTTP headers from within the browser.

Opera 10 continues development of its Turbo mode, which uses proprietary compression technology to accelerate page loading. It's recommended for users in crowded Wi-Fi spots or on slow DSL lines or 56k modems, and users might even see slower page load times if they use it on a broadband connection, according to the company. According to their press release for this beta, Turbo "can offer broadband-like speeds on dial-up." If you have personal experience verifying this, please let me know in the comments below.

The Opera 10 beta 1 is definitely faster than its previous publicly available predecessor, the Opera 10 alpha, which in turn was dramatically faster than the most recent stable Opera, version 9.6. On a Windows XP desktop, with Service Pack 3, 2 GB of RAM, and a 2.8GHz processor, Opera 10 beta scored 5836.6 milliseconds on WebKit's SunSpider JavaScript test. The Opera 10 alpha hit 6068.7 ms on the same machine, while Opera 9.62 scored 7008.2 ms. This works out to be about 13 percent faster, although previous tests that I had done on a different computer found Opera 10 alpha to be three times faster than Opera 9.62.

Customizing toolbars is easier in Opera 10.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Keeping in mind that the test only looks at JavaScript run times and that running the test on different computers can result in shockingly different results, we're still seeing performance improvements, although not as drastic as the jump from version 9 to version 10. Also, due to time constraints, I was unable to run Opera through tests on Mozilla's Dromaeo at the time the story was published. These will be updated later in the day on Wednesday.

Opera 10 remains the only browser to successfully complete all aspects of the test. While the new version of Chrome scores 100 out of 100 on the Acid3 standards compliance test, it fails the linktest. For users looking for the most complete feature experience, and one that's cross-platform and synchronizable out of the box, Opera 10 remains an excellent alternative browser.________________________________________________________________

Adobe service puts browsers side by side

Adobe's BrowserLab is a hosted service that allows Web developers to visualize what their site looks like in different browsers.

(Credit: Adobe)

Adobe on Tuesday said it is offering a free preview of its BrowserLab service, which allows Web developers to quickly see what their site looks like on a number of browsers.

The technology, previously code-named Meer Meer, was shown last year at the company's Max developer conference. Using virtualization, the tool can show how a site will look in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safarirunning on different operating systems. Running BrowserLab requires a Mac or PC with Adobe Flash 10.

"Cross-browser testing has been one of the biggest challenges for Web designers because it is such an arduous and time-intensive task," Adobe's Lea Hickman said in a statement. "Now with Adobe BrowserLab, designers have a simple solution that enables comprehensive browser compatibility testing in just a matter of minutes, leaving Web designers with more time to be creative and deliver the high-impact sites customers are demanding."

Designers can compare a site in two browsers side by side as well as use an "onion skin" mode that shows a site in multiple browsers overlaid one on top of the other.

Adobe said that the preview version would be free, though it plans to charge at some point.

BrowserLab "will move to be a paid service down the line, though we have not announced the timing," Adobe product manager Scott Fegette said in a statement. "Currently the focus is on getting the preview out to users and making sure we're providing the best possible user experience."

Microsoft showed off a similar tool, SuperPreview, at its Mix09 event in Las Vegas earlier this year. Microsoft announced that the latest version of its Expression Web software for Windows would include the feature and show multiple browsers via a cloud-based service. It also made a free standalone version of SuperPreview available to allow users to compare how Web pages render in the three latest versions of Internet Explorer--IE 6, IE 7, and IE 8.

Fegette said that Microsoft's approach requires a large PC-based application.

"All we know is what was announced about SuperPreview a couple months ago at Mix, which at its core appears to be a large, Windows-only desktop application available for download which provides previewing support for locally-installed versions of Internet Explorer 7 and 8 alongside a dedicated IE 6 emulator, with the promise of 'cloud-based access' to alternate operating systems and browsers at an undisclosed point in the future," Fegette said.

BrowserLab's "onion skin" view compares how a Web site looks in multiple browsers with different browsers' views overlaid on one another.

(Credit: Adobe)

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Phil Spector: The fascinating tweets of a murderer

I've never been incarcerated in Los Angeles County Jail, so I wasn't aware that the headmaster, or whatever you call the harsh-looking chap who's always in charge of these places, gives inmates certain technological privileges.

Music producer Phil Spector, he of the Wall of Sound, rather than the Sound of Found, is currently a resident of LA County's prisoner palace, having been found guilty of the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.

However, because he is able to keep his laptop (as well as his iPod), Spector has taken to Twitter to express so many things about his time in jail, his feelings about music, and his disappearing wig. Oh, yes, and about his pet cockroach.

His Twitter feed makes for such extraordinary reading that you almost regret Norman Mailer's passing, as he surely would have written a book about it. However, let me at least offer you some of the more interesting tweetlets to whet your appetite.

Here's one, from May 28, to tickle your existential palate: "If the average man is made in God's image, then Mozart was plainly superior to God."

Or this, from the same day: "The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married."

(Credit: CC Loving Shiva/Flickr)

These were posted before he knew that his stay was to be extended by 19 years. That sentencing seems to have gone to his head, in a very cold and brutal way: "As if it wasn't bad enough I got locked up for 19 years, the bastards even confiscated my wig."

He begins to meditate on the subject of belief: "If you talk to God, you're praying. If God talks back, it's schizophrenia."

Many of us are not exactly fond of murderers, but we do seem to rather enjoy reading about them. So I have to say that the more I began to read, the more I became engrossed by what might, or might not, be contained beneath this man's wig.

Again, from May 29: "It's comforting to know that mental health doesn't always mean being happy. If it did, nobody would qualify."

A few minutes later, Spector finds a friend: "Have befriended a cockroach. I'm naming him Wilson."

He finds more friends on Twitter. In reply to someone called MILE, Spector tweets: "One positive thing about old age is that you can remember everything that happened, even if it didn't happen."

Now, I'm not suggesting this is Voltaire quite yet, but few Twitter feeds seem to have such literary potential.

After all, this man was responsible for some truly great music. So here's a recent tweet on the subject: "Most producers don't create, they interpret. When I went into the studio I created a sound that I wanted to hear."

But perhaps not everyone appreciated how great he was. Especially colleges: "I'm concerned with the fact that I have not been made a doctor at any college and Bill Cosby has, even Dylan has."

Spector even tweets about his own potential insanity: "To all intents and purposes I would say I'm probably relatively insane, to an extent." And he suggests a reason: "My mother and father were first cousins. I don't know genetically whether or not that has something to do with who I am and what I became."

What he became, if even his recent Twittering is anything to go by, is a fascinating case, one that is strangely worth following.

In case you wondered, he is about to write an angry letter to try and get his wig back, he's listening to both Engelbert Humperdinck and Lily Allen on his iPod and he thinks "American Idol" is an insult to music.

Oh, and he's currently following only one person: Yoko Ono.

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Tech giants reportedly targeted in DOJ recruiting probe

Apple, Google, and Yahoo are among the tech giants being investigated by the Justice Department for possible antitrust violations related to negotiations over the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees, according to aWashington Post report.

The review is said to be "industry-wide" and in preliminary stages, according to the report, which cited two unnamed sources. Companies that agree not to hire away talent could be stifling competition, the report noted.

Representatives for Apple, Google, and Yahoo, as well as the Department of did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tech companies, known for their exhaustive recruiting efforts, have waged fierce battles to maintain top talent. In one closely watched case, Google was sued by Microsoft in 2005 over Google's decision to hire Kai-Fu Lee away from Microsoft to run Google's research operation in China. The two parties eventually settled out of court.

IBM has proved particularly territorial about departing executives. Last month, the company filed a lawsuit in federal court to prevent its former head of mergers and acquisitions, David Johnson, from joining Dell, saying it would be a violation of his contract.

Last year, IBM sued Mark Papermaster to keep him from joining Apple. The lawsuit claims were nearly identical, with IBM charging that Papermaster's joining Apple would cause him to divulge trade secrets and was a violation of the non-compete clause to which he agreed. IBM and Papermaster settled after three months, and Papermaster finally started working at Apple three months after that.

You can beileve in Microsoft's Project Natal

LOS ANGELES--About halfway through a closed-door demo I was in this afternoon of Microsoft's just-announced full-body motion-sensitive control system, Project Natal, another reporter told our host that he was skeptical of what he was seeing.

A minute later, after taking the virtual controls himself of the game "Burnout Paradise" and giving Natal a test, the reporter walked back over to where I was standing and when I asked him if he was still skeptical, he gave me a chastened look and said, "It's interesting."

In other words, he was won over.

Project Natal, as you probably know by now, was Microsoft's big announcement at its E3 press briefing here. It has gotten a lot of attention because of its promise to make it possible to incorporate all kinds of hands-free control into a wide variety of games: Racing games, painting games, shooting games, sports games and so on.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

But until now, I hadn't seen the technology close up. I was part of a small group that got the demonstration deep inside Microsoft's cavernous E3 booth. We were allowed to ask whatever we wanted, but we weren't able to take video or photos of the technology.

One thing that came out of the presentation: Tsunoda said unequivocally that the software behind Natal was developed entirely in-house at Microsoft. But he wouldn't address the question of where the hardware came from, or specifically, if it came from 3DV Systems, a company that has been working on this kind of technology, and which Microsoft recently acquired.

Having seen the 3DV technology a couple of years ago, I can say that what Microsoft is showing today is very much the same, but with a much more user-friendly front end. In other words, I would bet that 3DV is the source of that hardware.

Here's my quick impression: Natal is for real, and it may well change the way people experience video games, as well as anything else that is run through an Xbox 360.

Tsunoda began our demonstration by explaining the problem Microsoft had set out to solve: To make the gaming experience fun for everyone, while not alienating the core Xbox 360 fans.

"The control system is simple," Tsunoda said of Natal. "People can just jump in and have fun. (But there's) an extra layer of fidelity for core gamers."

Project Natal (see video below) is designed to be a one-to-one avatar control system, Tsunoda said. Wherever you move your hands, your body or your legs, the system captures it and mirrors it on the screen and in whatever game you're playing. "No (other) controller in the world allows you to control your whole body," he said. "Every part of the body is in play."

One interesting thing that came up in the demo is that when a woman stepped up to use it, the system recognized she was female and represented her on-screen as a female avatar with long hair. Tsunoda said that ideally, Natal will recognize users and be able to grab their existing Xbox avatars, but that in such a demo environment, it simply represented her the best way it could, given what it could see of her skeletal structure.

Another interesting point was the way Natal recognizes people's skeletal structure and analyzes how we move. Tsunoda made the point that Natal will continue to work even if someone walks in front of a player because it knows how the human body works. So, if a player had his or her arms blocked, but Natal's cameras could still see part of their arm, it can fill in the rest based on algorithms that tell it how that arm should look.

And it's the software, Tsunoda said, that's the "magic" behind Natal, and that allows the technology to "extract the human skeleton."

Natal is designed to work whether someone is standing up or sitting down, and can recognize users very quickly. We saw that in action when, one-by-one, we were invited to step up and play either a kickball game or a driving game. With a couple of exceptions where the player didn't stand in the right place, Natal did seem to almost instantly recognize that a new person was playing and, then, respond to their movements.

This may have been most impressive during game play of the racing game, "Burnout Paradise," when it was clear that Natal was doing a fine job of translating the player's hand movements--mimicking holding and turning a steering wheel--into moving the car on-screen.

Tsunoda said the technology behind Natal includes an RGB camera, an infrared camea, a multi-array microphone and a depth map. These features allow the system to track a player in 3D space, as well as to capture spoken commands from multiple people, none of whom have to wear a headset.

Asked how Natal differs from the many other motion-control cameras that have come along over the years, Tsunoda simply said that nothing that has ever come along before has been able to instantly work when a new player steps up in front of it, or when the lighting conditions change, or when someone else steps in front of a player.

"Ours, you can play any way you want," he said. "This just works the way you want it to."

Clearly, Microsoft is banking heavily on software developers--who are just now getting development kits--being able to utilize Natal in their games in such a way that players don't have to do any kind of configuration or tinkering in order to get it to work. Absent that instant-workability, the system loses a lot of its allure. But Tsunoda was insistent that that is Natal's value proposition and that developers will have no trouble making it work that way in their games.

If that's true, then it would seem that Microsoft has a real winner on its hands. As I wrote yesterday, any success depends, though, entirely on price point, and how users get their hands on it. But right now, having seen Natal close up, I have to say I'm a believer.