I won’t lie to you—when I first heard we were touring the “Microsoft Surface” area last Thursday, I assumed “Surface” meant…well, you know, surface! Like a tour of the campus. A surface tour. I know, it doesn’t make sense.
+10 blonde.
Thankfully I did some research before we arrived Thursday evening and I had come to the conclusion that we would be checking out a futuristic alienesque thingamabob. That you touch. Like…a giant iPad. Seriously, gadgetry isn’t my thing.
But by the time I left Microsoft that night, I had conceived a hundred different ways to sneak a Microsoft Surface unit in Tara’s car and into my apartment. Right now they are available for cooperate use only, but MY hope for the near future is to see them in homes across this fantastic nation. A good starting point would be my living room. Just saying.
Sure, Surface easily proves its worth with corporatey-bullshit, but I was looking at Surface with one specific angle…gaming. The potential is there—and so are the ideas. I’m not sure what I can or can’t talk about, but if Surface becomes mainstream (and a few thousand dollars cheaper), I could see it opening up a new branch of gaming. Nothing will ever replace a controller (sorry, Kinect) but the idea of four people playing on the same 40″ touch screen, interacting with and even FACING each other is just awesome. Think about it—how much FUN would it be to play Tower Defense on that thing while drunk with friends?!
I’d say it’s safe to expect that casual games will be the first to hit Surface, but I wouldn’t necessarily rule out the possibility of “hardcore” gaming experiences on the platform…OOH! Maybe Bioware will develop a “Control the Normandy” mini-game exclusively for Surface. You could play as Joker and dodge Reapers and shit.
::excited::
So, I take it you missed seeing Dungeons & Dragons being played on the Surface 1.0 last year at PAX East?
Also, I asked one of the team leads to install a bunch of games on the demo unit at Microsoft’s office at MIT; Guess you didn’t get a chance to play with that one either eh?
Both were pretty cool experiences and I’m hoping there is access to them again at this PAX East. [Side note: If I’m not mistaken, they have a couple of units in the Sheraton lobby as well]
I didn’t see D&D, but Tara did and she said it was awesome. I want to see MOAR.