A write-up of Microsoft's conference!
Welcome to the start of the GBAtemp e3 coverage. For those of you not aware E3 is one of the biggest games related conferences anywhere and is traditionally where a lot of the biggest news on gaming gets released first.
Today is the turn of Microsoft to show what is coming up for the xbox 360 and this is our writeup of the press conference- while we mainly cover Nintendo consoles on this site we do also have a fair portion of our userbase well versed in all matters 360.
2010 is an interesting time for consoles as once again we find ourselves nearing the traditional end of a consoles lifespan (although this time around companies are striving to delay that) but more importantly the developers have had five years to get to grips with the hardware and the games of the last few months have certainly shown this. E3 is less about the past and more about the future though so moving on.
Starting at the end the 360 slim was detailed- somewhat smaller than an original 360 and has wifi (802.11n) inbuilt. Cost is $299 (comes with 250 gig hard drive) and apparently ships to stores today. More as and when a teardown appears.
Originally part of the kinect presentation but of interest to those who are not about to spring for a kinect various US centric sports were shown thanks to new/renewed/enhanced hookups with ESPN and sports center to be delivered via live and free to Gold members.
Back to the games though MS broke with tradition and rather first rattle off some impressive sounding stats that make it seem like they are the cutting edge they jumped right into the games.
The Games
Some of the story mode was shown and gameplay looked to be halfway between crysis, the more traditional COD type of gameplay and the recent Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
The early call would be that it will probably be great for those that already like COD but will not do much to win anyone over.
Also announced was a DLC time delay exclusive with activision as it pertains to COD.
A fairly radical shift from the stealth (ish) roots of the series, on display here was the “cutting” engine and indeed enemies, scenery (or parts thereof) were shown being sliced up as your sword strikes it rather than the prerendered animations you usually get. Lots of slow motion and other things included.
360 Exclusives
4 player co-op is sure to interest people and it looks to be somewhat polished on that front with co-op related moves, an interesting move where the player sticks a grenade onto a meatshield and sends them back towards their associates. A new race with a heavy emphasis on mutations and some destructable walls/cover by the looks of things.
Not so many games in the Microsoft conference but EA, ubisoft and more do have their own conferences over the course of the next few days so expect more to come in as it rolls on.
The rest of the presentation was devoted to this (probably something to be said for them announcing the rest of the presentation would be 360 exclusives after MGS rising). Many things were demoed and the general opinion of gbatemp's IRC channel was “underwhelming to say the least”. For those that missed it the kinect/natal project is something like the eyetoy for the PS2 but taken a fair bit further- it has cameras and so motion sensing abilities among other things- the aim it seems to move away from controllers and towards "natural" interfaces.
Kinect appears in the US on the 4th November 2010 with a bunch of launch games many of which were detailed in the conference,
First though the key word was “simple”- make it so anyone can use it.
Waving hands around was a popular choice and voice control was another
Feeding into the Live thing they announded a windows/MSN messenger linkup between the 360 and PC clients. Usual voice and video extras that you could expect. The ability to watch a video at the same time as someone else was also demoed (not sure how well that would work with lag and upstream of connections but as a tech demo it was not bad).
Onto the kinect games. Avatars were the order of the day for graphics for the first demos.
Kinectamals- a virtual pet game and presumably the logical conclusion of last year's “pet boy” game that was demoed.
A sports game that looked something like Wii sports meets track and field (the people run on the spot in that case to do hurdles).
This was followed by a montage featuring football (soccer), bowling, table tennis, boxing and netball.
In a further bid to make handlebar syndrome acceptable a mario kart style game was demoed.
Kinect adventures- perhaps best described as the eyetoy ninja on rails.
Ubisoft then appeared to demo a fitness game. While it will certainly be less pronounced by shipping “lag” was a common word. A fair clarity/resolution was achieved though.
Dance central- closer to music games than dance dance revolution and co. Much like music games DLC, DLC and DLC again was promised.
Lucas arts detailed what was surely a tech demo with a star wars- rail shooter/slasher
A new Forza game was shown- looked to be far better than the kart type game but otherwise was a by the book driving game with. Had an interesting looking CAD like mode as well. Set for release in 2011.
If you missed it you can catch it again in many places (those reading immediately it might take a few minutes for the live streams to be converted).
