Casey Hudson has gone from “mass” to “micro” as he prepares to help sell gamers on Microsoft’s holographic lens platform.
Hudson earned his reputation at developer BioWare, where he was the creative director for famous role-playing games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Mass Effect trilogy until he left the company in 2014. Now, he’s working at Microsoft Studios as its creative director, a role that will have him working on the Xbox brand and the HoloLens, Microsoft’s virtual reality initiative.
“As creative director at Microsoft Studios, my primary focus will be the creative direction of HoloLens Experiences,” Hudson said in an interview on Xbox Wire, Microsoft’s official Xbox blog. “I am extremely passionate about the potential of this kind of technology, as anyone who’s talked with me over the last couple of years can attest. I feel that the work being done at Microsoft on mixed reality and holographic computing will have a tremendous impact on how all of us interact with technology in the coming years. It’s an honor to be able to join such an incredibly talented team, and to work on something that will fundamentally advance the role computers play in our daily lives.”
Virtual reality is the new trend in gaming. Sony is working on its own headset, Project Morpheus, and Oculus and Valve’s Steam VR are coming to PCs. However, with gamers, the best way to get them on board with new technology is with a killer game that shows it off. As a former game director, that is likely Hudson’s role with Microsoft and HoloLens. Unlike other virtual reality projects, HoloLens projects holographic displays over real environments. Hudson could make a sci-fi game out of your living room. Remember how characters in Mass Effect had holographic displays that shaped themselves to characters’ arms? You could see something similar on your own body when you look at it through HoloLens.
However, HoloLens and the other mentioned virtual reality device don’t have release dates yet. We might hear more about them at next month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
