If you’ve heard about Microsoft’s project Natal, then its about time you heard the name PrimeSense. They’re the company who is responsible for the inner workings of Microsoft’s 3D motion controller. Direct from PrinSense’s website:

The PrimeSensor Reference Design is a low-cost, plug and play, USB-powered device that can either sit on top of or next to a television screen or a monitor, or be integrated into them. The Reference Design generates realtime depth, color and audio data of the living room scene. It works in all room lighting conditions (whether in complete darkness or in a fully lit room). It does not require the user to wear or hold anything, does not require calibration and does not require computational resources from the host’s processor.

How it does this is by simply bathing the area in front of it with “near-infra red” light, then using its CMOS image sensor to receive the light and translate it into code which it then communicates to a PC or game console. In a recent press release revealing the deal between Microsoft and PrimeSense, Ilan Spillinger, vice president of Xbox 360 hardware, stated that “PrimeSense has delivered an important component to the technology, helping us deliver revolutionary controller-free entertainment experiences in the living room.” Inon Beracha, chief executive officer of PrimeSense commented on the deal saying “We are especially honored to have a partner like Microsoft who shares our vision for bringing innovative and engaging natural experiences to consumers.”

The technology behind Microsoft’s Project Natal is certainly worth a lot of attention. Microsoft will be able to launch many games with a new sense of interactivity that has not been achieved before. Just imagine the ability to fully utilize your entire body into the latest sports games. My only question is how they will utilize this technology for first person shooters. There will certainly still be the need for input devices in most games. What will happen when your cat or dog walks on by, or you get interrupted by someone walking through? Perhaps this may result in total seclusion before you start playing with Natal.

Now I never said that Final Fantasy XI didn’t look good– only that it took like four years to get to level 5. It seems that Final Fantasy XIV isn’t lacking in the looks department either, bringing back that lovely style which felt so cohesive in the first MMO.

Square Enix is releasing a series of “Life in Eorzea” shorts in order to get people like me back in the mindset of the world, and it works to a large degree. Just check out the vid after the break to see most of the races (and some environments) in action, and stay tuned for the future installments.

The new Medal of Honor was announced via trailer on Spike TV December 12, 2009. This is yet another game that seemed to slip under my radar. EA is creating a refresh of the old game, stepping away from World War II and placing it in modern times in war torn Afghanistan. The new game is being created in cooperation by both EA’s Los Angeles studio and Swedish based developer DICE. DICE was the company that created the popular Battlefield Bad Company series and also Mirror’s Edge. Check out the latest trailer at their website here.

EA is setting themselves up nicely to compete with Activision’s Modern Warfare series. The new Medal of Honor places you with elite Tier 1 operative soldiers in the U.S. led NATO war against Al Qaeda. When asked in a recent interview with Kotaku on why they chose Afghanistan, Medal of Honor executive producer Greg Goodrich said,

Afghanistan sort of chose us. We had a story we wanted to tell and it was about a certain group of individuals.

When asked if he was using this setting as an attempt to grab audiences from current events Goodrich said the following:

We have a story to tell: Our story, our characters and the quality level at which we’re telling our story will engage people whether it’s there or anywhere else. The backdrop is just that. It’s a historical backdrop that has rich history. It all adds to that recipe that goes into making a great storytelling experience, beyond the locale, beyond the time of day, beyond the audio or music.

This is something that I feel the Medal of Honor series will play into their latest game: real life historical events. The Modern Warfare series places you into a fictional war and storyline. Here Medal of Honor will thrill us with real people in historical events, all of which took place during the first part of the Afghanistan War. All I can remember was the feeling I had playing Allied Assault for PC when I played the D-Day landing. I true sense of get the hell off the boat and find some cover before I died. It brought the first attempts at blending cinematic storyline and gameplay together. I hope to expect the same things with this iteration of Medal of Honor. Expect to see this game for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 this summer.

Bringing up the slack (possibly) in the MMO market, Final Fantasy XIV now has some excellent sub-variants of the various races already available for play. Check ‘em out inside…

You may have heard about the dude that tried to steal Atomic Games’ Breach code from PAX, but the saga continues. Apparently the guy didn’t show up to his arraignment with the Boston Police, and thus a warrant for his arrest has been issued.

It all went down something like this…

You may not be surprised (especially ’cause you’ve probably already seen it) but the passing has been delayed to an ambiguous date of “spring” as revealed on the Xbox show, “Sentuamessage.” Besides wondering if that was an official show, my first reaction wasn’t really of overwhelming dissapointment. As I watched the footage of presumably more New Orleans streets spotted with the living dead, overturned cars, and four survivors sprawing bullets everywhere, I felt not even a twinge of excitement. Let me tell you that I’d probably accept a cage match for anyone that would begrudge Valve the title of one of the best game producers ever before I further my reflection of my non-reaction.

You see, to me, Left 4 Dead 2 represents a rarity in this day and age for me, if not the majority of folks, where game buying is hyper-informed. You and I don’t buy Crappy Castle Adventure because teh webz told us from two hundered sources that the crappy in the title applied to more than just the Castle that you visit in-game. I queried, and the collective gave me a green light. I even played the demo. But I played the game for like a week. Shame on me, you say, for buying a game that you didn’t end up caring about after so much research. Touche. A well earned touche. But I can still say something about the hindsight of all this…

Apparently “Still Alive” by the Portal team over at Valve knows no limits. Now its being sung by children, percievably to an audience who has to make sense of the lyrics. In some sense this is like getting kids to say “truck” when they can’t pronounce it correctly and instead utter F dash dash dash, having no idea the implications thereof. Still, its pretty cool.

Check out the kids and some vague case mod-esque lighting after the break.

Sam Fisher is at it again. I remember playing the first Splinter Cell on my Xbox way back in high school (2002) and thought that the game’s concept was very well done. The graphics were amazing, not to mention the lighting was phenomenal. I don’t remember much about the game’s story line though I remember being hooked into the style of gameplay. Then they released Pandora Tomorrow in 2004 and Chaos Theory in 2005. I remember playing segments of Pandora Tomorrow on PC but don’t think I ever finish the game. Same thing with Chaos Theory. Since then they released Essentials, which was released for the PSP and then Double Agent for the Wii, 360, and PS3. I actually played Double Agent on the Wii and thought they did a fairly decent job at incorporating the Wii remote. Now Ubisoft is gearing for the release of Splinter Cell Conviction on April 13.

The new iteration looks like it will be another great game done by Ubisoft. The game caught me by surprise the other day when I found their latest development video. Take a look at it at the end of the post. One of their key features in this game is using the environment to display mission objectives and information. While you are sneaking around, an objective will look like its being projected on a nearby wall. Same with mission vital information. This seems to be very interesting way to drop in game menus to give it a better gameplay flow…

Be sure to check out the video after the break.