Absurd Details on Natal’s Cirque du Soleil Event

This article is over 14 years old and may contain outdated information

Recommended Videos

We’ve reported before on Microsoft‘s lavishly planned E3 Project Natal event, which is going to involve a performance by Cirque du Soleil, and that press will not be allowed to bring electronics in.

Well, the show goes up tomorrow night, and the LA Times has some new details on what we’ll all miss, at least until someone inevitably uploads a shoddy YouTube video of it.

And yes, an elephant is involved.

Apparently Michel Laprise, artistic director for Cirque, wowed Microsoft executives with nothing but three rocks, a flashlight, a pail of sand, and a small wooden elephant.  According to Don Mattrick, Senior Vice President of MS’s Interactive Entertainment Business unit, who could maybe stand to watch a little less Reading Rainbow:

He used the power of words to share what he saw in his imagination.

Charming.

The story of the forty five minute performance that’s supposed to accompany the announcement or demonstration of Microsoft’s new motion sensing technology for the Xbox will be of a young boy looking for three fallen meteors, and figuring out what they mean.

According to Laprise:

It’s a story about humanity, about a quest and about overcoming obstacles.  In history, there have been discoveries that have made us leap forward as a civilization. But those technologies demanded that we master their language, the language of machines. This time, it’s the machine that’s adapting. The human is at the center, doing what comes naturally. Moving, jumping, talking. And it’s up to the machine to interpret what that means.

Somehow, this requires a 9-foot elephant puppet. Well, actually, if Cirque du Soleil says they need a 9-foot elephant puppet, I’m sure they actually need it.

But does Microsoft need it?  The more we hear about the Natal show, the more it reminds us of this:

Probably not what Microsoft has in mind.

(via Eurogamer.)


The Mary Sue is supported by our audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Learn more about our Affiliate Policy
Author
Image of Susana Polo
Susana Polo
Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.