Wolverton: Highlights of E3

LOS ANGELES — At E3, the annual video game conference here that goes by the formal title of the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, the latest, greatest games usually take center stage.

But what I found exciting this year was all the innovation that's taking place on the hardware that the games are played on and in the services used to deliver them to consumers. Three companies in particular showed off some neat new technologies at E3 last week that could revolutionize the way consumers play games, how they get them and the type of games they play.

For me, the standout device at the show was Microsoft's new Kinect accessory for the Xbox 360. Kinect is actually a collection of different technologies that allow users to interact with games using just their bodies and voices.

The gadget has a pair of cameras, one sensing visible light and the other infrared rays, that, when combined with some sophisticated software, allow it to view people as three-dimensional objects in a three-dimensional space. The gadget also has a microphone and includes speech recognition software.

I played a series of Kinect demo games at E3. They reminded me a lot of the first time I played the Wii: The games encourage you to get up on your feet and physically get into them, rather than simply mashing buttons on your couch.

But unlike the Wii, you play Kinect games without a controller in hand. Instead, you simply pantomime movements such as

holding and turning a steering wheel or rolling a bowling ball or dancing a routine.

I found that by casting aside the controller, I was able to immerse myself in the games much more than I would have been able to otherwise. In fact, they reminded me of the imaginary games I used to play with my friends as a kid, pretending we were piloting starships or shooting imaginary guns.

Another new technology at E3 has the potential to change how consumers get games and what they play them on.

Startup game company OnLive last week launched an online service that streams games from its data centers to consumers as they are playing them.

With OnLive, consumers don't have to worry about waiting for downloads as they do with other online game services; instead they can play the games instantly, as if they had already downloaded them. They also don't have to worry about buying a pricey new console or a high-end PC. They just have to have a 6-megabit-per-second broadband connection, which isn't too hard to come by these days.

Much of the processing power and graphics capability needed to run OnLive's games is provided by the company's servers. Consumers can play even graphically complex games with 2- or 3-year old PCs. Later this year, the company plans to offer an inexpensive "mini-console" that will allow consumers to play the same games in their living rooms.

Because all the games are hosted by OnLive's data centers, the company can create massively multiplayer versions of the games easily and can allow users to watch any of a number of different users play their games.

I played a little bit of "Assassin's Creed II" on OnLive, and it felt and looked just like I was playing it on a PC or a PlayStation 3. Instead, though, I was playing it on a regular MacBook, Apple's lowest-end notebook computer, with the game data streamed to me over the Internet.

While OnLive could change the way consumers get their games and what they play them on, Nintendo's new 3DS could jump-start the world of 3-D gaming.

In order to play stereoscopic 3-D games right now, consumers have to wear special glasses. Not only can those glasses look goofy, but they also can be expensive, costing more than $100 each. Moreover, consumers frequently will have to invest in new TVs or monitors to see the 3-D effect.

What makes Nintendo's 3DS so exciting is that it offers a 3-D gaming experience without the need for glasses or extra expense. The company uses a screen technology that essentially includes the filter typically provided by the glasses. The screen takes the dual stereoscopic images and helps users' eyes combine them so that they see a deep 3-D image.

Nintendo showed only a few game demos and movie Wireless AV Module Promotion Area of Security Systems Jammers Cloisonne Cute GSM Cell Phone with Camera-Black trailers on the 3DS, so it's hard to know what it will be like to play games on the device. But I liked what I saw. The 3-D images were realistic, and the ability to see them without needing glasses was a big plus.

As exciting as these technologies are, none of them is a sure bet.

Microsoft hasn't set a price for Kinect, and the types of games that seem to fit best with the device are the type of casual, family-friendly ones that have long struggled to find an audience with the Xbox's core gamer user base. OnLive's service is neat in theory, but it could be undermined by Internet traffic jams or too many simultaneous users. And the 3-D effect on the 3DS seemed a bit tenuous in my testing; it could be thrown off by spots on the screen, glare from the sun or by tilting the screen a little too much to one side.

Still, I'm excited about the potential of each of these new technologies and eager to see how they affect the world of gaming.