Well, the rumors proved to be true. Microsoft unveiled its motion controller at their press conference. But it’s not exactly a controller. Instead, it’s more of a camera where you “become” the controller using full body motion capture that tracks 3d movement. It will also have the ability to scan your own gear. The example given showed a kid holding up a skateboard to the camera which then scanned his skateboard into the game. This controller (codenamed “Project Natal”) will also have voice recognition capabilities.

Kudo Tsunoda then came out on stage to demonstrate these new controls showing how they will work with the Xbox 360 Dashboard. He first signed in by the camera using face recognition software. He then moved his avatar by moving his body followed by waving his arm from right to left to cycle through the menus. Next, a demo was shown where balls were being thrown at  and the player had to kick and hit them away. And lastly, something called Paint Party was shown where the motion sensing was used to splash paint across a canvas.

Afterwards, Peter Molyneux’s Project Milo was shown demonstrating the camera’s capabilities. You can take a look at our story about that on the site.

Tsunoda, in an interview with G4TV, announced that Project Natal will not be released in 2009. No further release plans were announced.

To be honest, this stuff looked like it was working suprisingly well. We’re just going to have to wait and see how this thing works in games other than tech demos.