E3 10: Microsoft Presentation Round-up
This is our round-up of Microsoft’s E3 presentation. We’ve summarised the big announcements and then linked to various places for more reading. Enjoy!
Xbox 360 Kinect
Microsoft let the cat out of the bag yesterday, but the E3 presentation really showed us the meat. As for what there was, frankly, I’m unimpressed. While the technology looked pretty great and tracking of the player was smooth, the problem was software. Most of the games shown were waggle games but without controllers and looked very much like Wii-envy. There were fitness games, dance games, pet games and and super-fun-happy-times adventure games; all Wii clones in my opinion. There were some promising displays though: A Kinect Forza looked nice, with your hands actually up holding an invisible wheel. There was also a Star Wars game shown. But of course, can your hands offer the same precision of a controller?
Microsoft say 15 games will be released at launch, but looking at them and it’s not promising.
Using Kinect, the console will now be partially controllable by your hands and voice, too. A special Kinect dashboard will let you wave your way to opening Netflix as well as enabling commands like “Xbox, play music.”
No pricing has been given out yet, but GameStop has the thing listed at $149 as well as bundle pricing. Obviously that could be an error and we’ve not had anything confirmed yet, but that’s quite high and could be why Microsoft is keeping its lips shut. No idea of UK pricing yet, but $149 is around £100. We’ll find out soon, or at the very least November 4th when it launches.
New Xbox 360 slim
Microsoft finished the presentation with the unveiling of the brand new Xbox 360. The jet-black console is smaller, leaner and has more corners then the current version. As for name, it’s just “the new Xbox 360″, but we’re going with “slim”.
Inside it features a 250GB harddrive, 802.11n Wifi and will launch this week in the US for $299 and on July 16th for the Europe. The current Xbox will drop to $199 and the Arcade will now price in at $149. (We’re not sure on Euro pricing yet, but $299 is around £199 [AceyBongos has confirmed that].) It will also be quieter than the original console, with only one fan and Microsoft even calling it “whisper quiet”, so there’ll be less of a jumbo jet in your living room. There’s now touch sensitive buttons, with a “swipe of the finger” now turning the console off and on and opening the tray. (No slot-loading drive PS3-style, sadly.)
The console won’t be compatible with the former harddrives or memory units, although all other accessories will be able to be used.
Check out the Joystiq gallery for some more shots.
The new console looks pretty nice. I’d buy it solely for the quietness, so things like built in WiFi and a smaller design is pretty compelling. That price is also pretty good, but we’ll have to see what the exchange rate for European prices will end up at.
If you’ve missed the other shows, check out the Sony presentation round-up as well as Nintendo’s.
Evidently it’s confirmed as £199 in the UK. So say AceyBongos and Play.com, at least.
Guys remember that the new xbox only has 1 year warranty, also proprietory hard drives that will not work with the older xboxes.
The new X-Box 360 slim looks good. And I liked what I saw from Gears 3, Reach, Metal Gear Solid: Rising, and even Fable 3. I don’t really care one way or another about the ESPN partnership, its nice to know its there I guess.
I hated everything else.
Or to be more precise, I hated everything Microsoft had to show that involved motion control. I really thought for a while that Microsoft might do something cool and new with their hot new tech. Clearly that wasn’t the case. It was almost all copies of software that is already on the Wii and DS.
Microsoft should be completely ashamed, and Nintendo’s many creative teams, and those 3rd parties of have properly utilized the Wii should be laughing their collective asses off. Tune into Nintendo’s conference tomorrow to see what Microsoft will be doing 3 years from now.
I’m now convinced Natal/Kinect will fail, as right now, its a more expensive Wii (200 minimum for a console, plus 150 for the camera system, plus games) with a few cool UI features. They trying to jump on a train that left the station 3 years ago, at a higher price point.
I’m hoping for better out of Sony, despite Move being even more blatant copy of the Wii-mote, at least sound like they are integrating it into actual games.
Ok. Natal might be worth a damn, if I see more things like the trailer for Child of Eden from Ubisoft. Not sure what I just watched, but I like it.
I’m really looking forward to getting a Kinect for voice-activated advertisment scrolling.
The more I read about Kinect (which by the way, I wrote as Kinetic about a thousand times while writing this piece)the more I couldn’t give a shit.
The whole things seems just a shamelessly desperate attempt to grab casual users. Obviously devs are going to start using it once it’s released, but even then I don’t want to jump around playing videogames.
as a parent I thought a couple of the Kinect features looked interesting for family game night and kid’s party type stuff but I’m still not convinced about the VR stuff.
What do you mean you liked what you saw of Fable 3? They showed nothing… NOTHING!
@Sam “verygoodyear”: Agreed. If this thing comes out at $150 USD(and that’s without buying any dancing or fitness games!), it’s going to bomb. I was optimistic about Natal/Kinect… until they actually showed it.
@darkwhitehair: Would you rather have Peter Molyneux tell you it will change gaming(as well as your life, and possibly your underpants) forever, only to be terribly disappointed this holiday season? Keeping that man from over-hyping his game was probably the only good decision Microsoft made today.
I’m still struggling to see where Microsoft are heading with Kinect. The entire casual market they’re aiming for has been already been catered to by Nintendo. Sure this appeals to that market but everyone in it has already bought a Wii and probably doesn’t own an Xbox, so why would they fork out roughly $350 for essentially the same experience (and games) twice?
So who exactly are they selling this to? The 18-35 male CoD/Gears demographic couldn’t give two shits about waving their hands through the dashboard menus or voice commands, they just want to play some games on Xbox Live and chat with friends which Kinect offers practically nothing to.
So make some core market games, but how? Shooters are where the money is at (Gears/CoD/Halo) but how exactly do you shoot without tactile buttons to press or move without actually moving from the spot? Really how do you make anything other than Wii-HD games with Kinect?
The tech look very impressive, if somewhat laggy in places, but I really don’t see the market for this. But then again, people are STILL buying the Wii and associated shovelware so who knows =P
I liked the look for the 360 redesign, up until it was mentioned that transfer kits for getting your old files moved to the new harddrive won’t be included with the unit and is something you’ll have to buy separately. You’ll also have to buy your component or HDMI cables separately too, if you use those since the older cables won’t fit the new console.
Also it does kind of look like a Wii that’s been caved in with a brick. And just fuck Kinect, plain fuck that noise.
The console navigational potential for Kinect is at least interesting, reminding me optimistically of something like Minority Report. Bar the funky holograms.