Microsoft Surface

You've got to see it to believe it:  www.microsoft.com/surface/

Mmmm-mmm good.

It may be time soon to dust off those great old Avalon Hill board games and look at implementing them on this table - without the thousands of chit markers.  Twilight Imperium, anyone?  Or perhaps Settlers of Cataan?

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  Catan is already on the 360, but Midway and Wilderness Survival could be good (Midway with animations, no less).  Actually, the thing could recognize common dice (d4, 6, 10, 12, 20, ..) if just knew the geometry and layout of the faces, assuming each face was unique.  Shadowrun would be much more pleasant when dealing with a couple dozen d6 at once. :)

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2007
  Yep, heard about Catan on the 360, but IMO the video game presentation format deviates far from the original table top board game geshtalt.  Surface would restore a lot of the original horizontal mentality of the game, fuel the social interaction aspect of the game and open up new opportunities for hands-on finger and player token interactions. As for recognizing dice tossed onto the table... yes, it could do that, but why do we want that?  For me, the whole attraction of bringing the old table top games to Surface is to eliminate the bag of painfully pointy things that threaten serious bodily harm when sat upon, stepped on, eaten by the dog, or lost under the couch!  :P   Let's spend more time playing the game and let the mundane chores of probability and scorekeeping fall quietly into the background.