14 DAY TRIAL // As we saw at E3 2011, Microsoft is banking big on Xbox 360 owners using the new Kinect sensor to interact with their console, and has now unveiled a brand new advertising system that will be out early next year and really deliver an interactive experience to the consumer.
Microsoft's record-breaking Kinect motion and voice detection device has certainly taken the world by storm, and more than 10 million Xbox 360 owners now have it hooked up to their console.
We saw at E3 that more games will be made for it, while other titles are going to receive support through certain aspects of their gameplay.
We also saw that Microsoft is preparing a new Xbox 360 dashboard interface, which takes full advantage of the Kinect and its motion and voice detection.
Now, commercials will also be able to use the Kinect, as Microsoft's advertising group has revealed a new type of experience that will be delivered to Xbox 360 and Kinect owners by expanding on the Natural User Interface (NUI) provided by the devices.
"When you have highly interactive people and a passive medium, they are interacting with their phone or their laptop while watching TV," said Mark Kroese, the general manager of the advertising business group at Microsoft. "The Kinect sensor brought NUI to the TV, and built the foundation for another much-anticipated leap forward: interactive television. Advertisers and audiences have been ready for some time, but the underlying platform has not existed. Until now."
Basically, if you see an ad on the Xbox dashboard, you can select it and, depending on what type of commercial it is, interact with it.
You can share the video on Twitter by saying "Xbox Tweet", you can find out more about the product or advertising campaign by saying "Xbox More", when watching ads for certain TV shows, you can opt to have a reminder to view them on your Windows Phone 7 device by saying "Xbox Schedule", and many other things.
While some Xbox 360 owners won't really care about such things, the whole perspective of being able to actually interact with ads is quite interesting. For a full demonstration of this new system, check out the video below.