Microsoft E3 Press Conference Round-Up

14 Jun 2010 at 20:40:44 by Peter Parrish

The Microsoft E3 keynote speech shenanigans have just ended, and it'll come as no surprise whatsoever that Kinect featured heavily.

As was much-rumoured yesterday, a redesigned Xbox 360 was unveiled to the world - complete with WiFi and ready for Kinect. Those people lucky enough to be in the crowd received one for free, which was clearly not a bribe in any way, shape or form. Humble peons like myself will be able to buy one pretty soon though, as it was also announced that the new 360 would be available from next week for $299.00 USD.

The pricing of Kinect itself still remains a mystery, though we were given a release date of 4 November and informed that the package will come with 15 games. Many of said games were demoed, and based on what we saw Microsoft are clearly aiming to encroach on the Wii's 'casual family games' market. There was much jogging, jumping, dancing and petting of virtual tiger cubs with spooky ethereal hands, but little on show that would engage the 'hardcore' gamer.

There's more on these titles in Tamer's Kinect E3 Reveal report from last night.

The hardcore may, perhaps, be satisfied by the footage of Metal Gear Solid Rising which was confirmed to be using Kinect and also confirmed to be astonishingly violent (unless you happen to think spine-ripping is a walk in the park.) A few melons were also shown being brutally chopped.

Other games on show were Fable III, Halo: Reach, Gears of War 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops. Each of these demonstrated a mixture of cinematic and in-game footage.

We learned that Microsoft's grandiose "vision for the future of entertainment" involves a "controller free" Xbox 360, awash with voice commands, wacky hand gestures and (yikes) Justin Beiber. Video Kinect will remove the need for headsets when we chat with people over LIVE, and track us if we try to move away from the camera in a slightly frightening way. This will apparently be coming to MS Messenger as well, and Xbox LIVE will be making an appearance on Windows phone 7.

Finally, fans of sport living the US will probably be pleased to learn that an ESPN/Microsoft partnership means a whole host of live sporting events will be available through Xbox LIVE for (if you happen to be a gold member) free.

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