XBOX 360 & ZUNE BUZZ

This year, Microsoft has turned it-self into a box of nice surprises since it announced 2 new products that have recently generated some buzz: Zune HD and Project Natal.

Let's start with the Zune HD. This mobile wonder will have a larger screen with both, touch and OLED technology, point-to-zoom functionality, a built-in accelerometer, and touchscreen QWERTY keyboard.

I'm really excited with the news of OLED display: more vivid colors, higher contrast levels and less energy consumption But I'm more excited with the recent confirmation that it will also include a Tegra GPU, which means no more no less than: gfx hardware acceleration!!!

Now the question is: does this mean it will include a mobile version of D3D? No one outside Microsoft knows. Time will tell, but I'd love to see a built-in 3D support in this upcoming line of devices. Don't you?

So, let's hope MSFT hear our prayers and lets us create (and sell) some outstanding 3D XNA-based games for the Zune HD market.

Now, what's "Project Natal"?

Well, during E3 MSFT presented a new device as means of controlling 360's games without using a gamepad nor any other standard input controller. Just a stereoscopic camera, your body and your voice.

Don't you believe me? Then watch this video:

Fantastic! On the PC business, OS & touchable screens will accompany this trend and to some extent all standard controllers will tremble, in special the old mouse and the traditional keyboard hardware.

In a way, it's like taking the first steps to enter the tech-era of the film "Minority Report". Which is great! The challenge: as usual, learning-curve easiness vs. heavily-established users' customs.

This will indeed require a lot of fresh creativity to ease the transition in the UX towards a real gain in motion richness and more intuitive control.

Can you imagine playing an FPS game with just your body & voice? It won't be easy but eventually we all will, hard-core and casual gamers.

I guess at first it will be kinda blind search until developers find "a pattern" accepted by most gamers, not to mention the efforts and futuristic gadgets to bring back the always welcome force feedback in Natal'ed games. But I also guess it will be great to combine sports and games: "Do some fitness as you play".

Ok, enough small talk. Let's concentrate on the rumors around this incredible device.

As soon as the first images, videos and live demos of "Project Natal" were shown during Microsoft's conference on the past E3, many sites started to speculate on the release of a successor console from 2010 and on with an upgraded internal hardware.

This rumor was reinforced when a change in the hardware of the XBox 360 Arcade edition console was finally confirmed (an increase of the built-in memory module from 256 to 512MB).

Hold your horses! Some sites have been spreading the word that MSFT execs have confirmed mainly two things:

1. First, "Project Natal" will work on existing 360 consoles, and
2. Second, the 360 is half-way far from reaching the end of its lifecycle.

So, let's cut with this speculation trend and wait for it either in solo or bundled offers ... One thing to note though, this recent post on TeamXBox's twitter:

...in addition to built-in Natal tech, a key feature of the next Xbox would be full HD stereoscopic 3D visuals similar to 3D movie theatres.

HD stereoscopic 3D visuals ... Wow! But wait, "... of the next Xbox would be ...". Ok guys, please make up your minds ... humm ...

No release dates (nor prices) have been officially announced for both products, the Zune HD and the "Project Natal", but a few sites claim that Amazon is listing the Zune HD for September 2009.

Regarding Project Natal's release date, no word or hint, unless the latin word "Natal" not only was chosen because it means (related to) "Birth", but also taking into account its additional meaning: Christmas! Wouldn't be great to receive such a present this December'09? I'm really shooting at random here, but I really hope so ...

Cheers!
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

NEW ARTICLE CONTEST AT ZIGGYWARE

Due to the success of the last donation drive, our good friend Ziggy is hosting a new XNA-based article compo at Ziggyware with quite amazing prizes: "Ziggyware Summer 2009 XNA Article Contest".

How about a 120 GB XBox 360 with Wireless Remote (USA NTSC) for the winner? Cool, uh? And this is just a one of the prizes!!!

As usual, check the rules and mark the deadline in your calendar: September 1st., 2009.

Happy writing!
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

AVATARS 101

One of the cool new features included in the now available 3.1 version of the XNA Framework, is the support for "Avatars".

But what is an "avatar" anyway?

During the 4th quarter of 2008 the XBox 360 User eXperience (UX) was enhanced with an awesome change in the look'n'feel of the Dashboard.

As part of this "extreme make-over", quite really cool 3D-animated characters were added to the system to represent gamers.

How come? Well, once a user is logged in, she/he can customize how her/his avatar looks: body, cloths, apparels and so on. And if the user has a XBox Live account, that avatar description will be also available on the Xbox Live servers when sined-in, representing her/him with other friends.

You may wonder: "Ok, I got my avatar but, can I use it in a 360 game?" The answer is: "Yes, as long as the game supports the use of avatars".

The video below shows the use of avatars in the 360 game called "Uno Rush".

Now, going back to the XNA Framework 3.1, what is it supported, exactly? And how can we properly use these avatars in our XNA-based games?

• To start with, avatars are only available on the XBox 360. Meaning that "Games For Windows - Live!" does not support it,
• Read carefully the guidelines: "Avatars: What Can You Do?",
• Visit Dean Johnson’s blog -developer in charge of implementing avatars support in 3.1- for more in-depth info about this feature,
• The skeleton is not available for the public yet but it was mentioned that a Maya skeleton rig will be published sometime in the future (no dates posted though), and
• Right now, there is only support for built-in animations, so once the skeleton gets released, and unless an official sample is provided when that happens, you will have to create your own "CustomAnimation" class to handle your own animations. Again, more information will be provided by the XNA Team in the future.

Any code snippets? Fortunately, there are great official and unofficial samples and articles out there explaining "How-To":

• Avatar Multiple Animations Sample,
• Avatar Animation Blending Sample,
• Rendering Avatars in XNA,
• XNA Game Studio 3.1 Avatar Tutorial, and
• Streaming XNA From XBox to PC.

Next week I'm going to post an example showing how to create, render and process a transition out from one animation to the next one, as a slightly different approach to the method included in one of the samples of the XNA Team.

So, stay tuned!
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.