Hey, it's Johnny Lee! You might remember Johnny from his pioneering motion work with the Wii Remote, which got him hired by Microsoft to help build Kinect. Well, Johnny's now with Google, and his new project is even cooler.
That headline might sound corny, but it really could. You'll see why in a second. Johnny and his colleagues at Google's Project Tango are working on a phone that is able to scan the world around it and, over time, create maps out of it.
The primary purpose of this will be for Google's obsession with mapping and navigation, of course, but as you can see at around 1:35 in the video below, they're already coming up with game ideas as well.
Augmented Reality like they're proposing isn't new - there are primitive forms of it available on everything from current phones to the 3DS - but this phone's tech could turn your entire world into a game stage, and let you simply add new content just by visiting new areas. Throw in the touch screen and motion controls and you've got a completely new way to play video games.
Which is kind of exciting! Then again, motion controls and touch screen input are often a nightmare on their own. Combine them and we'll either have one hell of a breakthrough, or one hell of a problem.