Microsoft E3 Conference Summary
Well, the conference just ended, and I feel pretty good about owning a 360 right now. I’ll just jump right into the summary, starting with the cool stuff:
360 redesign is a bit smaller than the original 360, also shinier. It has a built-in wireless adapter and a 250 GB hard drive, and I’m assuming there’s no more red ring. Everyone in the audience received one of these today, for free, while the rest of the world can buy them for $299 later this week.
Metal Gear: Rising had a trailer, showing it to be a hack and slash brawler with bodies that cut exactly where you slash. It looks beautiful. There’s also a bullet-time mode where you can carefully choose the angle of your cut as you slice through a body, or, a watermelon.
Fable 3 has a release date and a trailer. It looks like Fable, which is a good thing. North America can expect it October 26, 2010.
Kinect is coming to North America on November 15, 2010, with 15 Kinect-specific games at launch, including an unmentioned Sonic Riders game. It looks rather amazing, and I think Microsoft realizes it’s not going to replace real, controller-based games. It does, however, do a lot of what the Wii does, except it tends to do it better. Kinect Sports looks generic and a little stupid, but I could see where it’s necessary for this type of game. Then there’s Kinect Adventures, which puts a very game-like package on top of a Wii Fit sort of game where you’re copying the movements you see on the screen. Kinectimals is basically Nintendogs, but a bit more interactive - sort of the next step in that concept. There’s also a kart racer.
Ubisoft unveiled a game called “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved,” that puts your body as Kinect reads it on the screen, letting you see specifically how well the game is tracking your movement. It calibrates everything based on your body, then shows you next to a personal trainer who is doing a given exercise properly. Instead of Wii Fit’s guessing your position by your weight distribution, it can say specifically whether or not you’re doing it right.
Then there’s a dancing game from MTV and Harmonix called Dance Central. Like any rhythm game, it requires you to act in time with the song, but with this, it’s showing you the dance move you need to pull off. There’s a tutorial mode that breaks apart each move step by step, then strings them together, allowing you to learn fairly quickly (or so they say).
The Star Wars game mentioned earlier seems sort of like lightsabers on rails, which could be interesting - it remains to be seen. Then, there’s also a Forza game incorporating Kinect. Both of these titles are coming some time in 2011.
Kinect Video is a video chatting service that uses Kinect to deliver the familiar video chat experience. It adds head tracking - if you move around the room a bit, the camera will follow you. You’ll also be able to watch videos with the person.
Call of Duty: Black Ops has a release date - November 9, 2010. There’s also a trailer. This game is going to sell like... something that sells really well before holidays. Microsoft has a deal with Activision that puts DLC for Call of Duty first on 360 until 2012.
Gears of War 3 had a live demo, showing some highly polished third person shooting, some new female player characters, and a dodge mechanic that may or may not be new to the series. It looks nice.
The developer of Crysis and Far Cry, Crytek, has teamed up with Microsoft for something called “Codename: Kingsoms.” Apart from a teaser showing some Medieval/Roman battle scenes, there’s not much more to know about it.
Halo: Reach looks like a Halo game. There was a gameplay demo, which showed the same old, plus some space fighting.
ESPN On Demand will be available for free to Xbox Live Gold members. This means free streaming of lots of sports, and some other neat features, if you like sports.
If you're looking for more information, or some of the video highlights from this conference, I would recommend checking out GameTrailers, and search for whatever it is you're interested in.
