【英语科技】微软重磅推出视频游戏新设备

Microsoft Corp. is betting a new product called Kinect will deliver a bigger audience for its Xbox 360 videogame console by letting people play games without a traditional controller.

But Kinect, when it goes on sale Thursday, will also be the most visible test in years of whether Microsoft can churn out breakout consumer products from its huge investment in research and development.

Microsoft faces increasing pressure from investors to show a payoff from those investments, which amounted to $8.7 billion for the fiscal year ended June 30 -- bigger than the R&D budget for any other tech company. Microsoft has poured a chunk of that money into improving existing products and services like its Bing search engine, as well as more traditional franchises like Windows and Office.

Kinect will be especially visible: an entirely new $150 device sold at retail outlets and aimed squarely at the consumer market, a field in which Microsoft has been more sluggish to respond to trends than Apple Inc. and other competitors.

Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, said he believes the company's R&D investments have paid off well for Microsoft. 'We kind of view ourselves as almost a pure intellectual property business, and as such one that requires a sustained investment to stay ahead and remain competitive,' he said.

Although Kinect builds off an earlier motion-sensing game product-- Nintendo Co.'s hugely successful Wii -- some game industry executives believe Microsoft has taken the concept in an innovative new direction by completely eliminating the need to hold any hardware while playing. The device includes a camera, microphone and an infrared depth sensor that can detect the movements of a players' entire body, rather than just the hand movements Wii responds to.

'There are high stakes for them to get this right,' says Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst at Caris & Co.

One Kinect game published by Microsoft aimed at youngsters, 'Kinectimals,' lets people play with a menagerie of baby tigers and other animals, scratching their chins by making a tickling motion with their hands. A game from MTV Networks' Harmonix called 'Dance Central' scores players on their dance moves.

'Kinect is what the future of gaming looks like,' says Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ubisoft Entertainment, a games publisher that has announced five games that use Kinect, including a fitness title and a fighting game that go on sale this week. 'This motion-sensing controller technology that they've created is absolutely a breakthrough.'

Kinect includes sophisticated software and hardware that came out of Microsoft's research operations in China, the U.K. and company headquarters in Redmond, Wash. The different groups contributed 'machine vision' technologies designed to map the skeletons of players as they stepped in front of a camera so that foot, hand and head movements quickly trigger like motions on screen. They also devised 'beam forming' microphone technology that could focus on verbal commands coming from a player, ignoring the ambient noise likely to be occurring in a living room during game-playing sessions.

微软(Microsoft Corp.)即将推出一款名为“Kinect”的新产品，这个产品使人们不用传统控制器就可以玩视频游戏。微软认为该产品势必会为Xbox 360视频游戏机带来更多用户。

但另一方面，定于周四上市销售的Kinect，也将成为多年最引人注目的一次检验，看微软在研发方面大举投入后是否能够推出具有突破性的消费类产品。

微软承受着越来越大的压力，要向投资者证明他们的投资是有回报的。截至6月30日的财政年度，微软投资总额高达87亿美元，比任何一家科技类公司的研发预算都要多。微软将其中大部分投资用于完善现有产品和服务，如搜索引擎必应(Bing)和Windows与Office等较传统的产品。

Kinect的检验效果之所以会尤为明显，是因为它是一个全新设备，在零售店售价150美元，瞄准的完全是消费市场，而且在这个市场上微软对于流行趋势的反应相比苹果(Apple Inc.)和其它竞争者历来都较为迟缓。

微软首席研究和策略长穆蒂(Craig Mundie)说，他认为研发方面的投入给微软带来了较好的回报。他说，我们在某种程度上几乎把自身当成了一家纯知识产权企业，而且是需要持续投入才能保持领先和竞争力的那种。

Associated Press两名男孩在位于夏洛特的一家游戏商店试玩Kinect.早先的一款动作感应产品──任天堂公司(Nintendo Co.)的Wii极为成功，虽然Kinect只是在此基础上的升级换代，但一些游戏产业高管认为，微软推出的这一产品让人们在玩视频游戏时完全不需要手持任何设备，因而把动作感应游戏这一概念引入了一个颇具创新意义的新方向。具体来说，Kinect包括一个摄像机、麦克风和红外深度感应器，这个感应器可以探测到玩家全身所有动作，而Wii游戏只对手上动作有感应。

投资银行Caris & Co.分析师阿加瓦尔(Sandeep Aggarwal)说，Kinect的成功对微软意义重大。

在微软专为年轻人设计的一款叫做“Kinectimals”游戏中，玩家使用Kinect和一群小老虎和其它动物玩耍，他们可以用手做出挠痒痒的动作来挠小动物的下巴。MTV Networks旗下Harmonix推出一款名为“Dance Central”的游戏，为玩家的舞蹈动作打分。

游戏出版商育碧(Ubisoft Entertainment)销售和营销高级副总裁Tony Key说，Kinect代表游戏业未来的发展方向，微软发明的动作感应控制器技术绝对是个突破。育碧已经宣布有五款游戏使用Kinect，其中包括本周面世的一款健身游戏和一款打斗游戏。

Kinect产品的软硬件都十分先进，它们均为微软在中国、英国和美国华盛顿州雷德蒙总部各研发团队所设计。这几大研发团队对“机器视觉”技术都各有贡献。具体来说，就是当玩家站在摄像机跟前时，这项技术可以描绘玩家的轮廓图，让其手、脚和头部动作可以很快触发屏幕上的相应动作。此外，他们还发明了“波束成形”的麦克风技术，可以让麦克风只专注于玩家口令，忽略游戏过程中客厅里可能产生的环境噪音。