Microsoft has poured lots of money into basic research R&D over the years, which did not seem to pay off much in terms of popular products. Apple, Nintendo, Google, etc. seemed to come out with more innovative products, despite spending nowhere close to what Microsoft spends on R&D.
This looks like a big exception to that. Johnny Lee, as a recently minted PhD, certainly knows the state of the art in this field, so if he says it is way beyond what other researchers are doing I believe him.
If they can deliver the kind of sensing, voice and face recognition in the demo, along with higher end graphics than the Wii, they should easily own the next generation of consoles.
This isn't about the next generation of consoles, this is about the next generation of input technology.
Apple won multi-touch, so Microsoft is going to push the conversation ahead to gesture-based ubiquitous computing devices. Once they get the cameras small enough they can just stick these things on Accelerando-style glasses or a wifi-enabled necklace akin to the sixth sense TED demo- that's when we have true ubiquitous computing.
I think the key word there is probably "product"; there's certainly been some great demos that have come out of MSR. A thought that comes to mind is that this could be the ideal product for those demonstrators: the concept has been proven successful by Nintendo, and they can apply their research to take it to the next level.
This looks like a big exception to that. Johnny Lee, as a recently minted PhD, certainly knows the state of the art in this field, so if he says it is way beyond what other researchers are doing I believe him.
If they can deliver the kind of sensing, voice and face recognition in the demo, along with higher end graphics than the Wii, they should easily own the next generation of consoles.