zcam

Microsoft hopes the acquisition of a virtual reality start-up will give it another trick up its sleeve in the game console wars, if one report proves true.

As anyone who has been following the video game industry over the last couple of years knows, Nintendo's Wii console has been the runaway sales leader.

In the early going of the so-called "next generation" of consoles, which began in late 2005 with the release of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and continued a year later with the launch of the Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3, each company tended to refer to the "console wars" as being a battle between the three.

But more recently, as the Wii has vaulted far ahead of either the Xbox or the PS3, Microsoft and Sony have recast the console wars as being just between the two of them; They argue, instead, that the Wii is a very different kind of machine and that, in fact, many Xbox or PS3 owners also own a Wii.

Semantics aside, it's clear that Microsoft and Sony have long since determined that their consoles might never catch up to the Wii in total sales, especially if they don't do something drastic to compete with the Wii's intuitive motion-sensitive controller, the Wiimote.

That might explain why Microsoft is in negotiations to spend around $35 million to buy Israeli start-up 3DV Systems, as is being reported by the Israeli daily Haaretz.

With its ZCam, a 3D camera that connects directly to a PC, 3DV was already hoping to be a player in the video game space, since the camera was designed to let players control games entirely with their hands. … Read more