Back in November of 2007, Microsoft filed for a patent on a device known as the "Magic Wand." The patent, which was filed roughly a year after the release of Nintendo's gesture-based Wii console, was just recently made public.

The abstract description of Microsoft's device is as follows,

The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can facilitate rich interaction with and/or management of environmental components included in an environment. The architecture can exist in whole or in part in a housing that can resemble a wand or similar object. The architecture can utilize one or more sensor from a collection of sensors to determine an orientation or gesture in connection with the wand, and can further issue an instruction to update a state of an environmental component based upon the orientation. In addition, the architecture can include an advisor component to provide contextual and/or comprehensive guidance in an intuitive manner.

There are plenty of theories surrounding the proposed application for such a device, including a Wiimote-like controller previous referred to as Newton. The patent includes the names of a number of Microsoft bigwigs, including Zune/Xbox-daddy J Ballard and Andy Wilson, one of the heads of Microsoft's Surface project.