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And it isn’t just about games.

The release of a new generation of video game consoles has traditionally meant the promise of new, previously impossible kinds of video games. The jump from 16- to 32- and 64-bit consoles made possible three-dimensional game worlds. The next generation made possible the expansion of these worlds to impressive scale and the furnishing of these worlds with outrageous amounts of detail (think about the difference between Mario 64 and Grand Theft Auto 3). And though the last jump, to the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, took some time, it ultimately enabled the painting of these worlds with staggeringly lifelike texture and cinematic quality (think about the difference between GTA 3 and GTA 4, or the Mass Effect series).

Now that the announcement of Microsoft’s new system, the Xbox One, has come and gone, we know the contours of the next generation, the first in eight years. The new machines from Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are wildly different, but they are all ostensibly game systems, and this may very well be the last time these three companies release new systems within a year of one another. In other words, this may be the last console generation, as such. And for the first time in their thirty-year history, game consoles are no longer about presenting new kinds of games to consumers.

That was most obvious on Tuesday, when Microsoft revealed its new consumer electronics device, and I hesitate to call the thing a game console, any more than I'd call a tricked-out PC a game console. It is an impressive device that does a lot of interesting things, and it looks like it belongs on a sideboard, and it is certainly a much more versatile and ambitious device than Sony's PlayStation 4. But, the very first thing that Microsoft decided to show about the Xbox One, their lead, the thing they were most proud of about their “game console”, was the fact that you can verbally order it to watch television. The second thing, I believe, was that you can use your hands to make the display smaller. The third had to do with Skype.

Microsoft announced at the event that they had eight exclusive games in development for their new black rectangle, and that these would be announced in three weeks at E3, the gaming trade show in Los Angeles. Todd Holmdahl, a corporate vice president of hardware at Microsoft, told me on Tuesday that it was important to take the two events in aggregate, that there was simply so much information about the Xbox One to disseminate that it would have muddied the message to announce both the system and the games. That’s a fair point, but also: what?. If you take the hundreds of journalists on hand for a game console announcement on an hour-long tour of the anechoic chambers and test labs in which the gesture-control sensor in your new device was honed, you're sending a message. If the most interactive game-thing that you demonstrate to the press is the new rumble strip in the triggers of your controller, you're sending a message. If the biggest news about actual games in your introductory press conference relates to the number of servers that can offload graphics processing to the cloud, you're sending a message.

The message is: The most important thing, the first thing, the defining thing about the Xbox One is the platform, not the games. Console manufacturers have always bragged about their new hardware, but always in the context of what it meant for games. This is new.

I want to be clear: this is not by definition good or bad, as some have written. But it is a change, and it does have obvious implications for the culture of console gaming. Of the half-dozen games Microsoft teased, three were FIFA (the best selling game in the world), Call of Duty (the best selling game in America) and Madden (the second best selling game in America). Millions of people play these games, and for Microsoft they represent a real, compelling route into the homes of the people who play them and the people who live with the people who play them. Indie games, prestige games, creative games, frankly, don't. In ten years, the percentage of games today for mainstream game consoles that were weird, or idiosyncratic, or not “IP” may seem well and truly strange. We may very well expect to control our televisions with gesture and have cable-cum-game boxes that can suggest programs or games to us based on our mood, deduced through our facial expressions and heart rate. But the place for novel kinds of games on a piece of technology that takes as its aim the American mainstream seems small indeed.

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Since we saw Illumiroom at CES in January, the technology has come quite a ways. But while it’s still a spectacular technology display, don’t look for it to pop up in any Xbox announcements in the near future. In fact, Microsoft Research’s Hrvoje Benko and Brett Jones told us during a interview that while they have Illumiroom technology working well at this point, they’re not likely to even demo it to the public until July at Siggraph.

That’s not to say that you’re not going to want it. The researchers showed in detail exactly how it works: they use a Kinect to scan your living room, then project a series of “illusions” onto it with a wide-screen projector, getting the colors just right using a technique called “radiometric compensation.” The projector and Kinect can be mounted in any convenient spot in the room, like the ceiling or a table. While the technology can be used with other forms of entertainment, researchers concentrated on gaming, since they’re able to generate source material that works well with the effects. Some of those illusions include “focus,” which displays special effects around the images, “segmented focus,” to extend the display to portions of the living space (requiring extra material to be generated), and “appearance,” which can actually change the look of the living room by giving it a cartoon appearance, for instance. Despite the still-early phase of the research, it’s definitely whetting our appetite for more — and you can see a full video of the presentation after the break.

Filed under: Gaming, Science, Microsoft

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When Microsoft’s Frank X Shaw announced on Tuesday that more Windows Phone handsets than iPhones were shipping in seven markets, the question on the minds of market watchers was, “OK, which seven?” The answer, courtesy of The New York Times Bits Blog, is Argentina, India, Poland, Russia, South Africa, and Ukraine — along with a smaller group of countries (including Croatia) that falls under the banner of “rest of central and eastern Europe.” The numbers come from market research firm IDC, a representative of which further deflated Shaw’s claims by pointing out that three of the markets (Ukraine, South Africa, and “rest of”) amounted to less than 100,000 units apiece in the fourth quarter of 2012.

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The fine folks at Tinhte have actually gotten their mitts on a Motorola-made Android phone that hasn’t already made its main debut. Right from the gate, the outlet keeps in mind that it’s not the rumored “X phone” because it’s missing out on a big, magnificent display that would rival other flagship gear, but the specifications still offer it a fair amount of horsepower. Behind the device’s approximately 4-inch 720p screen hide a Snapdragon S4 Pro (or better), an Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB of RAM and a 2,000 mAh battery. On the outdoors, the smartphone sports a curved back reminiscent of the HTC One, a black finish and a thin bezel framing its show. Tinhte states that the mobile carries a XT912A design number, so we reckon it could be a relative of the Droid RAZR, which is labeled as the XT912. Hit the jump for a video trip of the gadget, or click the source link for a full image gallery.

Submitted under: Cellular phones, Mobile, GoogleCommentsSource: Tinhte(1,

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