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Sliced Gaming Feature: A Talk with Robbie Bach - The Future of Technology and Entertainment

Writer: R J Gaffney
Posted: 18th February 2010, 8:51am

Microsoft Robbie Bach Presentation

On  Tuesday I attended a Microsoft Press Conference at the University of Sydney, where Microsoft was showing off some new tech and to talk about their goals for the future of their entertainment and devices division, headed by Robbie Bach, who delivered and interesting speech to a crowded lecture hall in the new Law department of Sydney University.

Adam Spencer was our Master of Ceremonies, doing his part to warm the crowd up with some jokes before the event. He started by thanking the indigenous owners of the land, who were its stewards for 40,000 years before European settlers arrived 200 years ago, and marvelled at the advances we have seen in that short period of time. He spoke with amazement at how far technology has come in those twenty years. Apparently he has a two year old daughter that knows more about tech than he does and can do things to his phone that he doesn't know it could do and takes him quite some time to undo. He is also convinced that she knows exactly what she's doing. He joked about how it took him nine and half years to get his Arts degree and how, in 1990, someone brought a laptop to a lecture to take notes and it was weird. Now it's weird if they don't. 

Then Adam began to joke about Robbie Bach, who is apparently reading the Twilight series to his daughter (doesn't like the third book, isn't a fan of Edward) and introduced the man himself, who took the stage.

I love computer science. It is the only science that is bound only by our imagination and nothing else. - Alex Kipman, Natal Project

Bach had a slide-show that had quotes from various people (which are littered through this article). He spoke about multi-screen displays and how everything should connect. Phones should speak to PCs, TVs should speak to PCs, phones should talk to TVs (some of this already happens, as Bach mentioned, but not at a rate or in a way Microsoft is happy with). Bach spoke about a time when you will be able to use your phone as a remote for your TV. He cited an interesting Nielson poll (from the U.S.) which stated that 60% of people have a laptop in front of them while watching television and how the two shouldn't be separate for longer (Xbox Live plays in to this). Bach stated that Microsoft is working on this tech and is licensing it to other providers to get it all working to have everything linking everything else (AT&T, the largest telecommunications conglomerate in the U.S., was mentioned by name). 

Bach mentioned that the idea of having a separate remote to control a TV will be barbarian (my word, not his) to children in twenty years time, and that voice control and even syncing with mobile phones will be more common.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. ...

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