Remember IllumiRoom? It was a concept Microsoft showed off earlier this year that would project the environment from a game beyond the TV display and onto the walls around it. It was incredibly cool and there was even talk of it showing up on the Xbox One. Well, don’t get excited yet as the technology probably won’t be available to consumers for quite some time – if ever.
In an interview with Albert Penello, head of Product Planning for Xbox, AusGamers asked him if consumers would ever see IllumiRoom. His response was not encouraging:
“I wouldn’t expect you’ll see that. It’s very, very cool tech but it’s, like, for a consumer, it requires projectors and things. It’s really super-neat if you’re in the lab and you’ve got Microsoft money and you could totally set up this awesome lab, but… we looked at it, but for an average customer it’s, like, thousands of dollars [for the set up].”
Penello’s response isn’t entirely unexpected as projectors still do cost quite a bit of money. The technology that powers IllumiRoom requires multiple projectors so the cost would be a prohibitive factor in broad market adoption.
Even so, it would be awesome if Microsoft continued to play around with IllumiRoom. They could maybe release a scaled down version that wouldn’t cost as much. Sure, it’s a silly gimmick, but it was honestly the coolest thing Microsoft showed off this year.
If you need a reminder on how cool IllumiRoom is, check out the proof of concept demo that started all the excitement in the first place:
[Image: MicrosoftResearch]