Nintendo should preemptively attack Microsoft

[Squilliam]

WereKitten said:

@Squilliam
again: the world of 3d sensors and so called depth cameras predates the commercially known entry level options for consoles. Many cameras have been available, differing in tech and resulting in different tradeoffs for rate, resolution, field of view, z-sensitivity etc. If you say that you've been trying out different cameras and you've been playing with camera-based interfaces since say 6 or 7 years ago, why should the only options be "3dv or primesense"?

As for 3DV not bringing anything to the table of Natal's 3D: from the Eurogamer article you linked:

The two PrimeSense men are also very keen to point out that despite the Microsoft acquisition of time-of-flight camera specialists, 3DV, who'd already made several 3D-camera based gaming demos, all of the video capture and depth perception hardware within Natal comes from them, and only from them.

"PrimeSense isn't just the provider of the 3D technology in Project Natal... it's the sole provider," says Maizels proudly. "Project Natal is much more than a 3D sensing device, but PrimeSense is the only company responsible for the 3D."

...

"But Natal is much more than that. Natal is content. Natal is processing software. Natal is about other ways of interaction like voice and so on. Microsoft was able to put this vast and expensive eco-system around it to make turn a raw technology into a product. Natal is far, far wider than the PrimeSense element, but PrimeSense is the acquisition element."

Bold is mine: the guys are proud to be the eclusive partner and providers of the hardware. As they say themselves, Natal is more than that, including the processing software. So maybe this is where 3DV enters? Let me quote another link:

Moshe Lichtman, Microsoft corporate vice president and head of Israel R&D said:

“Fourteen development projects are taking place at the center today, twelve of them completely new and destined to become Microsoft products in new markets… the R&D center helped Microsoft in buying the intellectual property of 3DV Systems, and in the wake of that dozens of the company’s employees were recruited to work at the development center.”

I think this is quite clear: MS is using primesense's hardware instead of 3DV's Zcam. But they bought the intellectual property for the processing software from 3DV at least as a building block and put those people to work on the project. They might have scrapped it entirely by now, or merely and more likely swapped out the "parse the camera data into a 3D map" driver (primesense's chip will do that job instead) and kept the "build a 3d skeleton model out of the 3d map" one.

Thus I still won't buy that a small firm like 3DV was bought for patent litigation threats. If MS had developed the processing software before, they'd have filed their own patents on the software part. And as I said, any patent trying to cover the whole 3d-camera -> 3d skeletal model idea over different sensor techs would be unlikely to be enforceable given the width of the scope.

The most likely scenario is simply that MS acquired and later extended the necessary software base. It's up to you if you want to call this 3DV's work or MS R&D, because we'll probably never know where the fuzzy bounduary lies.

If Sony had spoken to Primesense and Primesense is one of two 3D camera companies aquired to this date it isn't too hard to mention them both in the same sentence if they had dealt with both. I believe that puts to rest the idea that Sony had talked to Primesense, because if they had spoken to them and declined the technology they would have every incentive to mention it and no incentive to refrain.

I believe its also fair to give good weight to the idea that Primesense would have a fair idea of other competitors in their same field and roughly the direction they are taking their technology. Its fair to believe the Primesense representative when he said that they were they only people in the field who used that technology and its likely they are the only ones in their field who had marketable technology within the gaming market specifically due to having less mechanical complexity in their implementation.

I cannot say what Iwata saw or didn't see, however I doubt they have the same resources to devote to the same technology that Microsoft do. Primesenses camera is useless without the software and Primesense who would have a fair idea who 3DV are would have likely said that Natal is a mixture of their and 3DV technology when directly asked by Digital Foundry if that were the truth. What incentive would they have to deny involvement of a fellow Israeli company?

Natal is merely an offshoot of a large ongoing research project. The project Natal codename likely refers to just the console implementation of other areas of research and development ongoing within Microsoft as seen with the link you posted regarding the security and communication implementations. Its a positive spin-off towards console gaming for a research project with entirely different aims entirely. I suspect 3DV is more relevant to the original concept and other costlier implementations would likely rely on 3DV technology, whereas the DF article was more centred on the Xbox 360 implementation of Natal.