Vince Bucci/Associated Press Images, via Associated Press Images for Xbox

Actors play Microsoft’s Kinect system at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.

 

 

 

Nintendo

Nintendo’s Mario Kart has 3-D features for the new 3DS.

These extraordinary, almost otherworldly new technologies were on display here last week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Better known as E3, the expo is the video-game industry’s annual showcase, and sure, there were plenty of interesting new games to test drive. But far more impressive were the new systems for participating in interactive entertainment, particularly from Nintendo and Microsoft, and the powerful implications they have for expanding the concepts of what entertainment can be and how it can be experienced. The clear star of the show was Nintendo’s 3DS. The DS is already the world’s most popular portable game system, but the 3DS is truly revolutionary.

Incredibly, the 3DS displays true 3-D images without the use of special glasses. It actually works. Unlike many 3-D movies with objects that might appear to come whizzing out at you, the 3DS images appear to have depth that recedes into the screen. I spent about an hour with the 3DS a few days after a media presentation on Tuesday. Most of the demos were noninteractive, but the 3-D sequences from Mario Kart, Star Fox and Metal Gear Solid were enthralling and made effective use of the entire visual palette. I also watched a 3-D clip from DreamWorks Animation’s “How to Train Your Dragon,” a harbinger of the 3-D films that film studio and Disney will provide for the 3DS.

Without delving too deeply into the technology (known as a parallax system), the 3DS works because the user holds the unit directly in front of the eyes at a somewhat fixed distance. Similar technology does not work effectively on home televisions because you have to look at the screen from close to a direct perpendicular angle in order for the image to retain coherence. Anyone slightly off to the side will get a distorted image, and that’s why the first generation of 3-D TVs require cumbersome special glasses. Nintendo’s success in making 3-D work without glasses in an easy-to-use, immediately accessible fashion is a triumph akin to how the Wii reshaped home gaming by rethinking what a game controller is, how it functions and who might be able to use it. Nintendo did not announce when it would begin shipping the 3DS, but senior industry executives expect it to hit shelves in Japan this fall and in North America next spring.

Microsoft’s new Kinect system is profound in a different way, and represents that company’s attempt to out-Wii the Wii. The Wii, after all, redefined the game controller by allowing users merely to wave it around rather than mastering complicated combinations of buttons. With Kinect, an add-on for the Xbox 360 that Microsoft plans to introduce in November, there is no controller at all. Kinect uses cameras to recognize the bodies of people standing in front of the machine without the use of any special markers.

As with the 3DS, the first time you use Kinect it feels a bit like magic. You can see an image of your body on the screen, and as you crouch and lean and jump and sway, so does your ghostly avatar. Kinect also includes an advanced voice-recognition system for controlling basic technical functions.

Kinect does not appear to be of much use for playing complicated and sophisticated games, but that is not its function. Kinect is designed to attract the women, children and families that Nintendo has appealed to so famously with the Wii, and in that regard it appears formidable.

The real question will be cost, which Microsoft has not revealed. That said, playing a dance game with Kinect is a grin-inducing experience (if you like to dance). The system also seems perfectly suited for home exercise programs. Why would you mess around with a special balance board for Wii Fit when Kinect can actually take your body’s measurements and monitor your posture?

Meanwhile, Sony, the last of the big three when it comes to video-game consoles, introduced a Wii-like controller for the PlayStation 3 called Move and also announced significant support for 3-D gaming on the PS3. Both initiatives seemed solid, but neither was as immediately compelling as the 3DS or Kinect.

Sony says that the motion-sensitive Move controller, which will be introduced in September, is more precise than the Wii controller, but the two systems don’t feel incredibly different. That doesn’t make Move bad or poorly executed, but it has the feel of something Sony has to do to keep up with the Wii in the area of gestural controls rather than a bold conceptual step forward.

It seems clear that the PS3 is far more capable of delivering a home 3-D experience than the Wii or the Xbox 360, but the problem is that actually watching 3-D movies or playing 3-D games in your living room or den can be very expensive.

I suspect that most everyday consumers who just bought their first big flat-screen TV are not quite ready to throw down thousands of dollars more for another 3-D-capable television. And it remains quite unclear if many people want to wear 3-D glasses on their couch for hours on end.

In any case, it is invigorating to see a part of the entertainment world that is innovating so energetically, not just in its content (the games themselves) but in its basic modes of interaction. By this time next year gamers around the world will be carrying 3-D in their pockets and hosting interactive dance parties at home. That’s pretty cool.