Bone-idle.ie - MICROSOFT KINECT E3

TITLE : MICROSOFT E3 REPORT
DATE : 14th JUNE 2010

MICRSOFT KINECT E3 REVEAL

E3 has finally kicked off and first out of the blocks is Microsoft with its first surprise, that after a year of promoting the "Project Natal" they have decided to change its name to "KINECT". Rolled out with an elaborate production from the Cirque du Soleil and a huge mechanical elephant, people got a look at some new games for the hands free controller.

With the help of a few celebs they showed off a couple of the new games for "Kinect" including a roaring rapids game which involves people "standing" in a raft floating down a roaring river you need to jump and lean to control the on screen raft. A car racing game and a Star Wars game that was interesting but short. All the video's it must be said had been pre recorded. The actors missed their ques, slips like the on screen charactors pulling out light sabers before the person moved!! I can understand that they didn't want anything to go wrong but that in itself is their undoing. If you are confident with your product show it working.

All in all a spectacular reveal that leaves us still just as baffled as to what Kinect has in store for us. Guess we must wait until tomorrow to get the low down on the software. And keep those fingers crossed for some harcore games. At the moment these party games hold little or no interest for us as we are hardcore gamers not 12 year old girls. So far we are more impressed with the Elephant than with Kinect.

HERE IS A QUICK HIGHLIGHT VIDEO OF THE EVENT.


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MICROSOFT'S E3 SHOW :

After a 30 min delay the Microsoft E3 conference got of to a start with a trailer for Black OPS followed by some game play footage introduced by Mark Lamira from Trey Arch. Featuring a tunnel section and a helicopter mission. Game looks pretty much like Call of Duty. Dom Mattrick then came on stage to tell us that Call of Duty DLC will stay a timed exclusive for xbox360 for the next 3 years.

Hideo Kojima then introduced us to Shijenobu Matsuyama producer of Metal Gear Rising who describes it as a Sword action game. You can slice everything open enemies, cars, metal poles!! It also shows a slow motion and precision slicing. Not too much revealed.

Phil Spencer corporate VP. then came on to mention other 360 exclusives including Crackdown 2, Fable 3 and Halo Reach. He then introduces Cliff Bleszinski from Epic games along with some other lead developers to give us a few minutes of Gears of war 3. 4 player co-op play through and it was impressive. Just what you expect from Gears lots of shooting and blowing stuff up. It really looks awesome.

Peter Molyneux gave us a trailer for Fable 3 and Marcus Lehto from Bungie gave us a play through of a section of Halo reach.

After that more Kinect. Even though it had its own event last night still took up a lot of time. They displayed the ease of use for controlling the Kinect. Just walk up wave and it picks you up wave again it enters the Kinect you can then use your voice to open Zune or watch a movie. Playing and pausing using just your voice and command Xbox play. You can also use your hands to move around the menu or to fast forward your films.

ESPN Announced that 3500 sporting events would be on XBOX LIVE next season in live High Def.

More Kinect this time games. A few basic party games

Kinectimals was introduced by a young girl (prob the best speaker all day!) which is a simple “pets” style game they adopt tigers etc and you can pet them or play with them etc.
Kinectsports is a track a field even turning on the spot and jumping hurdles as your avatar on screen does laps.
KinectRacing quite a colourful but basic looking racer with invisible steering wheels and pedals.
Kinectadventure then is the one with the Raft and a few other games where you move around and collect balls on screen.

Ubisoft introduced a workout game then. Dance central was put through its paces and brought some light relief.

Kinect got a launch date Nov 4^th 2010 and will launch with 15 titles. We got to see 2 more games that look a little bit more interesting, which included a Star Wars title and a Ferrari racing game but for the most part the launch games seem to be party/sports games. A bit disappointing for hardcore gamers.

Then to top off the show Microsoft unveiled a brand new xbox360. Smaller, sleeker and whisper quite, packing a 250GB hard drive and built in Wi-Fi. It Will launch this week at $299 (Dollars). A freebie of a new 360 for everyone in the audience made sure the show ended to rapturous applause.

Out thoughts :

What we expected really the Halo, Gears 3 and Metal Gear demos look very promising. The Kinect took up a lot of time and while it does look good it really needs games behind it yes its cool to use your hand to change a song but to tell the truth I don’t really mind using a remote. The new Xbox360 slim was a big announcement but one we had been expecting. All in all a quite enough showing from Microsoft limited to just 3 big game releases and a hand full of third party games as this show was over shadowed by the Kinect.