Much like last year, Microsoft's E3 press conference focused largely on their new controller-free input method, now known as Kinect, and the showcasing of many previously announced games. There was no talk of the Games for Windows platform, although it was briefly mentioned that Xbox Live will be coming to Windows Phone 7 -- we'll believe that when we see it. There weren't many mind-blowing announcements; all of the big non-Kinect games that were demoed had been previously announced, leaving the surprises for things like the new ESPN service, the release date of Kinect, and the new Xbox 360 slim system. It was a good deal shorter than last year's conference, running just around 90 minutes, and was thankfully devoid of any discussions or slideshows about how super-awesome Microsoft and Xbox 360 are.
Kinect Coming on November 4, Lets You Video Chat and Use Voice Commands
One of the details about Kinect that still hadn't been revealed up until today's conference was its release date. Microsoft announced today that it will be coming to the United States on November 4 along with 15 launch games but neglected to announce any sort of price. It did, however, demonstrate some of Kinect's cool non-gaming functionality. Video Kinect allows you to video chat with friends over Xbox Live or with people on Windows Live Messenger, which in and of itself isn't revolutionary, but we also saw two video chatters watch a video together. We also got to see how you can control videos and music through either hand gestures or voice commands to change music tracks or fast forward, pause, or play a video.
New Slim Xbox 360 Coming This Week
Long rumored to be in the works and then leaked through an advertisement just recently, Microsoft ended its press conference with the reveal of a slim Xbox 360. As you can see above, it's black and eliminates the curved design of the current Xbox 360 design. It's equipped with a 250GB hard drive and, at long last, will include an 802.11N wireless adapter. While the slim's announcement wasn't much of a surprise, given how heavily it had been rumored, what was surprising was that it's shipping beginning today and will be available for $299 later this week. Don Mattrick then pulled an Oprah move and announced that everyone at the press conference would be receiving a free slim Xbox 360 system.
ESPN Bringing Live Sports to Xbox Live in HD
Hulu was nowhere to be seen, almost certainly because Microsoft is still trying to work out the rights issues involved with it, but ESPN filled the gap by being the newest service to be added to the Xbox Live suite. SportsCenter anchors Josh Elliott and Trey Wingo took to the stage to announce an ESPN video service that will allow Xbox Live Gold members to watch more than 3,500 live and on-demand sporting events over Xbox Live, with much of that content coming in HD. Among the sports it will carry are the NBA, MLB, college football, soccer, and college basketball. Should you have Kinect, you'll be able to browse ESPN content with it, with Josh Elliott showing the ability to have it replay a clip over and over by simply saying, "Xbox: Replay."
Kinect Games Get Demoed: Dance Central, Forza, Your Shape and More
The bulk of the conference felt like it was a demonstration for the games you'll be able to play with Kinect. Microsoft wasn't especially specific when it came to announcing release dates and which titles will be available with Kinect on November 4, but the most likely candidate is Kinect Sports. Among the featured activities in the game are bowling, track and field, soccer, javelin, long jump, table tennis, boxing and volleyball. Other games were demoed as well, including the EyePet competitor Kinectimals, an adorable game that had a young girl playing with a virtual tiger on stage. Kinect Adventures appears to be a compilation of motion control minigames; we saw both a River Race and a game where you had to collect tokens by jumping and leaning while on a moving platform. Maybe the coolest part of the Kinect Adventures demo was seeing the game suddenly go into split-screen multiplayer -- in the middle of a game -- when a second person walked up and stood alongside the first player. And Joy Ride is indeed still alive and was shown.
There was a brief video of the Star Wars lightsaber game that was announced at the Kinect event last night which culminated with a lightsaber battle against Darth Vader. We also saw the newly announced Dance Central from Harmonix which seems to be the next evolution of the DDR games. Dance Central featured a mode that claims to be able to teach you how to dance -- we'll see about that. A new Your Shape game looked to be very much like Wii Fit without the balance board. And finally we saw what appears to be a new Forza game from Turn 10 that lets you drive by holding your hands up as if you were handling a steering wheel and look around the interior by moving your head. There was also a virtual showcase mode that allowed you to walk around a car, examine parts like the headlights, and get inside and look around. Milo was nowhere to be seen.
Microsoft Gets First Dibs on Call of Duty Map Packs
After a demonstration of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which featured a segment from the single-player campaign where you hijack a helicopter and then blow up enemies (and bridges) with it, Microsoft announced an exclusivity agreement they've made with Activision involving the Call of Duty franchise. Future Call of Duty games, Black Ops included, will be released just as they normally would on all platforms, but just as with the first two map packs for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Xbox 360 gamers will get first dibs on all map packs for Call of Duty games in 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Metal Gear Solid: Rising Makes its Debut
It wasn't especially Metal Gear Solid-like, but Rising made its debut a year after it was announced at Microsoft's E3 press conference in 2009. Described as a "sword action game unlike any you've seen before," the trailer showed Raiden slice-and-dice through enemies and scenery alike with his sword. It was extremely violent -- he sliced an enemy into multiple pieces in slow-motion while the enemy was suspended in the air -- until the ending sequence, where we saw Raiden nicely cut up a watermelon.
Halo Reach Has Space Combat in its Campaign
The campaign mode of Halo Reach was demoed for the very first time to the public. It looked slick, but beside some fairly massive battles, it didn't look especially different from what we've come to expect from Halo. Then came the end of the trailer when we saw a Spartan enter a spaceship and engage in combat with another ship. It lasted just a few seconds, but the promise of space combat in the Reach campaign is exciting news.
Fable 3 Dated, Crytek's New Spartacus-Like Game, and Gears of War 3 Co-Op
And then there were the other game demonstrations. We got the first look at Gears of War 3's 4-player campaign co-op, and it looked very much like Gears with female characters. We also got word on the release date for Fable 3: It's coming on October 26. And we got a look at Crytek's Xbox 360 exclusive game, referred to as Codename Kingdoms, which was very reminiscent of Spartacus and Gladiator.
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