Llamasoft is one of those game companies started by a computer nerd that grew up with computers in the 70's and 80's, like most of us. Check out his (6 part) history. Sound familiar?
Microsoft is baking Llamasoft's lightsynth, Neon, into Xbox 360 and I really can't wait to see it. All you need to do is put on some Marley, smoke up a bowl, and chill out to the sweet FX.
There's an article in the The Guardian here.
Now, what I'd really like to do, is have an EyeToy connected to the Xbox 360, conduct it like a Theremin and save the results to disk.
Umm, I think I saw this running during my last 360 presentation. It was way cooler than anything they have on WMP10 currently. Also the 360 will have a video conferencing camera... and the visuals are interactive... You can make your own assumptions :)
I saw Air in concert and their opening act was a crazy French dude and a totally hot chick who knew how to handle a Theremin. She made it look easy but you could also tell that it was a rather difficult instrument to play well.
I've only heard Zeppelin play the theremin on "Whole Lotta Love". I guess it's one of the only new instruments out there.
I'll check out the movies from the visualizations. I'm sure it's cool, but people did some pretty cool stuff early on with winamp, like Geiss. I like having a cool one built in, but I really hope the API is open enough that we get some cool user created ones (that aren't with micropayments). Probably not though, the market for "customizations" is usually pretty lucrative.
Anyway, it looks like another cool feature for Xbox360. It's really looking like MS is going to put together something that is good enough to take over several categories (game console, tivo, media player, apple TV box). It's the most excitement I've had in a long time over a Microsoft product. Second is XP x64, but they've killed that enthusiasm.
You can see the new 360 visuals in action (along with other cool live features) here:
Gamespy live demo