Immersive tech pulls players at E3 2010

The annual games bacchanalia otherwise known as E3 recently drew to a close and despite the chaos of multi-story megabooths staffed by both the bizarrely and scantily clad, two important trends were easily identifiable. Here’s a quick overview of this year’s dominant themes.

Motion control

Imagine you’re playing a baseball game. Would you rather push a button that tells the pitcher to initiate a throwing motion or would you rather whip your arm forward and watch the player mimic your movement. Anybody who’s played a videogame in the last 30 years is familiar with the button paradigm; at E3 2010, the games industry was clearly intent on adding the more novel notion of physicality to the controller mix. Continue reading “Immersive tech pulls players at E3 2010”

Virtual good creation becoming real brand task

Virtual good creation becoming a brand task One of the big show stoppers at E3 was Microsoft’s roll out of Kinect, featuring a natural user interface and motion sensing capabilities. With Playstation’s Move, Sony’s motion sensing addition to the PlayStation and the preexisting Nintendo’s Wii, there’s now greater emphasis on simulated environments. And along with these simulated environments, or virtual realities, comes virtual objects.

How will brands introduce their real world products into these rich virtual worlds? Computer-aided design (CAD) suddenly becomes much more important. CAD is typically known for the design of tools and machinery and for drafting and design in architecture. But now CAD and other 3D software solutions play an important role as brands begin to populate these virtual worlds with virtual objects based on real life products. Continue reading “Virtual good creation becoming real brand task”