Your Living Room = the Ultimate Machinima Theatre

Unless you've somehow abstained from the media or committed yourself to a Buddhist retreat, this past week saw a preview of the next-gen console showdown - Sony's PS3 vs. Microsoft's XBox 360.

Its the kind of event that E3 is built on (and for) - the new wave of silicon and solder that will continue to make E3 relevant. If you've seen any of the demos for these consoles, you can be rest assured that the next leap has been made - we're finally entering the stage at which real-time renders look as good as the pre-renders of yester-week. Without getting into the "which console is better?" discussion (though my chips are on the PS3 numbers atm), it's the opportunities presented by this new round of hardware that gets me looking.

I've often expounded at various conf/panels about how next generation consoles will help propel Machinima into the living room. For those who haven't listened in: These consoles offer a theatrical-like experience supporting HD resolutions (read the various console specs - PS3 and XBox 360). Much like Flash made the web an animation platform (delivering vectorized animation to your HTML browser), these consoles will enable high-quality 3D animation to be rendered at run-time (aka the point at which you watch it), with the Machinima assets (characters, sets, actions and sound) delivered over a net connection. (For those not familiar with the 3D animation process, most animated films like Pixar's The Incredibles, are pre-rendered, meaning that each frame of the film is generated in a process that can take anywhere from one minute to a few days, depending on the complexity of the frames). The technology these consoles offer, allow most of the animation to render in real-time. And while they might not be able to display the exact visual complexity of a film like The Incredibles in real-time at 30 FPS, they can come pretty close - particularly if the Machinima team is targeting the console as its primarily display platform.

Machinima represents yet one more entertainment strand that can be delivered down the broadpipe of an XBox Live (or whatever Sony's service will be called). I anticipate that there are a few development teams that are already gunning for this. It's virtually a no-brainer when you see the visuals (PS3 Unreal Demo - 52 mb) that the PS3/XBox 360 can create.