http://www.microsoftgamefest.com/details.htm
Change is a fact of life in the fast-paced and dynamic business of making games, and Microsoft is right here with you on the cutting edge. This year marks a historical movement in game creation as we disclose to you the latest technology details for “Project Natal”, the technology Forrester principal analyst, Paul Jackson described as “taking things to the next extreme." You will hear first hand from the engineering teams on how we are progressing with “Project Natal” and enjoy two full tracks on the latest development and design best practices.
Join us for two solid days of presentations across ten content tracks delivered by top industry professionals and learn about the state of the business, new opportunities for reaching and amazing your customers, and all the latest tools and technologies for all Microsoft platforms.
Engineers, artists, testers, producers, business development professionals, and game creators are all welcome!
"PROJECT NATAL" DESIGN
“Project Natal” not only revolutionizes the way people play games, but also changes the way games are designed and created. The “Project Natal” Design track will present innovative thinking and ideas to help you take your game from office to living room—creating new ways to work, building showcase experiences, divining user intent, and designing gestures for UI versus game interactions. Discover best practices and what makes the “magic” in a “Project Natal” game.
"PROJECT NATAL" TECHNICAL
“Project Natal” provides a groundbreaking new way for games to use natural user motion to interact with the Xbox 360. Experience the future now, with this cutting-edge technology! Join us to learn how to develop world-class titles using “Project Natal", which provides many exciting new features that can be challenging to programmers. In the “Project Natal” Technical track, we will walk you through how to overcome these challenges with a combination of classic techniques and new thinking. We will explore the depths of this exciting technology and dive deep into gesture recognition, avatar retargeting, speech recognition, advanced raw stream processing, handling different player environments, and many other topics. No controller required!
Looks like we should get some more concrete ideas about MS's Natal plans by February at the latest. Hopefully they put the presentations online after the event. Should be interesting to see.
