Microsoft pre-conference jitters

Last night, Microsoft held a press event in anticipation of their conference today. There, they unveiled Natal's new form: Kinect, along with a handful of games. 1up has the new design ready for your perusal. We'll be seeing Kinect hit stores in November.

Before I get into the games, I'll also mention the leaked images of a redesigned 360. It's not quite a 360 slim, but it's different - probably meant to be sold alongside Kinect. Something like this can't possibly be just aesthetic - we're probably looking at a new feature set here. Bigger hard drive, onboard wifi, no more red ring device failures... Now that Microsoft has a new piece of hardware to sell, a redesigned SKU like this is the perfect opportunity to finally resolve those issues. Unfortunately, without the "slim" philosophy, this will likely cost around $400.

Kinect games!

We've got a Star Wars game with lightsabers. If I remember correctly from last year's promotional materials, it's possible to use real life objects as props for Kinect... if that's still the case, it would be neat (and dangerous) to use this game with a real sword/fake lightsaber.

There's another game called Kinectamals, seemingly trying to appeal to the Nintendogs/eyePet crowd. Then, Kinect Sports - which, apparently, is a sports game, with volleyball, hurdles, javelin, and soccer. MTV is releasing a dance game that's supposed to evaluate your rhythm. And, that's about all they've shown thusfar. The information on these games is currently scarce, so if there's anything more interesting to report soon, I'll let you know.