I’ve been catching up on this joint interview between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates the last few days, and find it quite interesting. Apparently, gamers are focusing on less than half a minute of the entire series of videos, in which we get this conversation:
Gates: Vision…Software is doing vision. And so, you know, imagine a game machine where you’re just gonna pick up the bat and swing it or the tennis racket and swing it.
Mossberg: Yeah, we have one of those.
Gates: No…
Mossberg: The Wii.
Gates: No, that’s not it. You can’t pick up your tennis racket and swing it.
Swisher: Oh, your tennis racket.
Mossberg: Oh, I see what you mean, yeah.
Gates: You can’t sit there with your friends and do those natural things. That’s a 3D positional device. This is video recognition. This is a camera seeing what’s going on.
If I recall correctly, Microsoft showed off a dual camera system for the Xbox 360 last year that worked pretty well. However, I don’t like the idea of standing around a confined setup. Besides, I’m pretty sure Sony tried the whole camera thing already. With what Bill’s describing, though, is using the actual, real-life items in your games, without having to use, say, the Wii remote. …I don’t want to play FPS games by pointing a gun at my TV.
