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How the Future Gaming Consoles will Change the Way the World Plays

With the growing popularity of gaming consoles Nintendo Wii and games that let people connect with their friends to compete and collaborate online, the old image of the video gamer as being an overweight couch potato or pale faced shut-in is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. However, the next generation of gaming technology that is making its mark on consumers stands to completely revolutionize how people think about video games. With video game consoles that are controlled by the human body instead of controller or joystick and social gaming networks growing at an exponential pace, the gaming world of tomorrow will have gamers up on their feet and interacting with real gaming challenges in a way that is hard for us to imagine.

The next big step in the evolution of gaming technology comes in the form of a video camera designed to capture a player's physical movements and input them as controls for a player's character in a video game. For instance, if you are playing a volley ball video game and jump up to spike the ball, so will your player in the game. Similarly, if you are playing an auto racing game, the gaming console will recognize your grip around an imaginary steering wheel and stick shift as you steer and speed your way around the track. For individuals who are fans of multiple player online role playing games or first person shooters, this technology will let players collaborate with their team members with nearly complete immersion in a virtual real time environment that responds to a player's movements and lets competitors square off face to face.

This technology is far form the pipe dream of a few wistful developers. Sony has already developed a functional test product of such a device that they have shown off publicly at international video game conventions. Named Project Natal after the lead developer's boyhood home, this device consists of a fully functional video camera control center that responds directly to a player's movements for fairly simple games. In one recent exposition, an athletic player showed off Project Natal by playing a game that can best be described as a kind of three dimensional Super Breakout. As multiple balls came towards the player on the video screen, she jumped, kicked and punched them back to the virtual wall, knocking out one brick at a time. It looked like a total blast to play, and it was clear by watching the exposition that the player was getting a serious physical work out during the process as well.

However, this is but the first step in what will likely be decades of development toward increasingly complex games that challenge games socially, mentally and physically. There may even come a day when parents start asking the children of tomorrow:

"Did you remember to play your video games today?"