360 To Have Wii Type Control. (Not Controller)

Tucked in the corner of Kentia hall, normally reserved for the booths too off-beat to make it onto the mainstream floor, was one of the biggest stories of E3 2006. And no one seemed to notice.

There, a company called GestureTek was showing off a software development kit used to program for Microsoft's as-of-yet unannounced camera for the Xbox 360.

"We can't tell you for sure what Microsoft is going to do," said John Vincent, President of GestureTek, which was under a Microsoft press embargo until the start of E3. "All we can tell you is what they can do if they want to."

And what they can do with the GestureTek tools is extremely impressive.

What it amounts to is a system that can do almost everything that Nintendo's Wii controller can do, and then some. More than just a next generation version of EyeToy, this new software can accurately track multiple faces on a screen, judge distances accurately, and distinguish rotational changes.

In other words, as of last month, the Xbox 360 developers had all the tools needed to reproduce almost every demo Nintendo had on the E3 floor; all they were missing was the Xbox 360 camera.

Not only does the GestureTek demonstration make it very clear what Microsoft has planned for the Xbox 360, it also gives us the idea that the PS2 and PS3 might not be that far behind Nintendo's Wii as people thought.

(Via: About)

I've heard some people talk about this booth at the show and said it was pretty cool, and work suprisingly well, on there perfectly setup demo booth. Let's see how good this stuff works when it's out in the really work though. It's got good potential though.