Gore Verbinski's 'Matter' coming to XBLA from Blind Wink Games

This E3 brought the announcement of Matter, a new Xbox-exclusive game from the mind of Gore Verbinski, the director of Rango, The Ring, and 75 percent of Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Matter appends a title to the first project from Blind Wink Games, which was formed in partnership with Universal Studios. Phil Spencer, Corporate VP of Microsoft Studios, says Verbinski was the one to pitch the game in the first place. "He had been exposed to Kinect, and had this idea for a game. We heard the pitch and we were able to find a developer to plug in. So it was really born of his mind, and his idea."

The idea, first shown by an abstract, Tron-esque trailer during Microsoft's E3 2012 press conference, came from Verbinski's desire to highlight an emotional connection between players and their movements on screen. "You should hear it from him, he does a much better job than I do in explaining it," Spencer says, "but the idea was that in your physical motion, your emotion actually comes through.

"To a lot of people who haven't played games for a long time, somebody standing completely stationary with a controller in their hands kind of seems emotionless, even though we know that we'll be sweating or twitching," Spencer adds. "And [it was] his feeling, that with motion and movement, that the connection of the emotion that's happening on screen and how the player feels would be more natural."

We still don't know much of the Kinect game, but it sounds like it may be some kind of abstract puzzle game. According to Spencer, the shiny sphere in the teaser trailer is used as "a control surface for the game" (like rolling a Katamari with your hands, perhaps?), and the visual presentation is in line with a futuristic aesthetic that Verbinski wanted to explore in games.

Matter is coming to Xbox Live Arcade sometime in 2013.