Microsoft

LOS ANGELES--Microsoft on Monday gave its Kinect for Xbox 360 motion control system its coming out party, and there's a lot to be excited about.

The device will be released on November 4 in North America, but the company has not yet announced pricing. Rumors have the price in the $100 to $150 range, and Microsoft clearly wants to make Kinect accessible to the mass market so it can successfully take on Nintendo's Wii in the coming battle for the whole family.

The company hasn't talked much about its specifications, but it has unveiled the first six … Read more

Let's be honest for a moment. The Wii didn't become successful because of its motion controls--it became successful because of its controls and Wii Sports.

If games make the platform, then the launch titles for Microsoft's Kinect are even more important than the technology itself. Will they be worth the Kinect's likely $150 investment? At its E3 press conference, Microsoft announced that 15 titles would be available at launch and proceeded to briefly demonstrate a handful. Here's the rundown, and our knee-jerk response to each.

Kinectimals: Hereafter to also be remembered as "Skittles: the game" by those who saw the keynote, the demo consisted largely of a little girl playing with a tiger named Skittles. This is Microsoft's virtual pet game: 40 animals, 30 "unique activities," and a lush landscape that looked a little bit like Viva Pinata, but more realistic. Virtual hand motions can pet the animal and interact. This seems to make more sense as a download than as a more expensive disc-based game.

Kinect Sports: A shameless mimic of Wii Sports, Microsoft's will feature soccer, bowling, track and field, ping-pong, boxing and volleyball. The 200-meter hurdle event seemed impressive, but only required running in place. How will other sports work without a controller?

Kinect Joyride:: Last year's free racing game became this year's Kinect kart racer. Virtual car controls seem like a challenge to do well, but the rest feels like Microsoft's version of Mod Nation Racers.

Kinect Adventures:The demo featured two players cooperatively steering a raft down arcade-like rapids, standing, leaning and jumping to collect coins. That seemed amusing, but who knows what the rest of the game consists of? … Read more

If you're like me and were wondering why Kinect sounded slightly familiar when Microsoft announced the name for its new motion-sensing game technology/platform, it's because about five years ago Sony put out a PS2 EyeToy game called Kinetic. No, the two words aren't the same, but only one letter is different, which has a few bloggers wondering whether Sony will put up a stink about it.

We assume that someone at Microsoft's crack legal team vetted the name properly, but it all seems a little odd considering Microsoft Kinect seems to share a lot in … Read more

The Microsoft E3 2010 press conference has just wrapped up and the company finished things with a bang, debuting a brand new slimmer and edgy all-black Xbox 360 with a 250GB hard drive and built-in Wi-Fi.

More shocking, Senior Vice-President Don Mattrick announced that this redesigned Xbox 360 will be available in stores this week for $299. Also noteworthy was the mention of a "whisper quiet" operation, which is an acknowledgment to the current 360's loud jet-engine fan system.

Judging from our product shots, the slim Xbox 360 features an on-board digital optical audio out; a standard … Read more

Besides directly taking on the Wii with Kinect, how else can Microsoft hope to compete with Sony and Nintendo--not to mention Apple--this holiday season? With its big guns, literally.

Microsoft's focus at this year's E3 was, not surprisingly, on its biggest franchises. The company's boast was that the 360 is the only place to have these experiences--which all involved gunplay--although one, Call of Duty: Black Ops, is multiplatform.

Metal Gear Solid Rising: Hideo Kojima's sword-based Metal Gear action game was shown briefly, with a heck of a lot of slicing to pieces and a requisite fruit-slicing … Read more

Having attended the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show since 1999 (back then as an editor at gaming site UGO.com), we've seen trends, consoles, and even entire game companies come and go.

Preparing for the 2010 edition of E3 gave us a chance to go back through the hundreds of photos we've snapped over the years and pick out a few highlights (and maybe a couple of lowlights), which are presented in the slideshow below.

The majority of these pics are from 2002-2005, and include some noteworthy moments in gaming history, including our first look at the … Read more

Though they are a much rarer species now, the annual E3 video game trade show was once crawling with scantily clad "booth babes."

Over the decade we've been attending the show, things eventually got so out of hand that dedicated "booth babe" Web sites were popping up, and game companies were involved with a kind of promotional model arms race--which in retrospect fits with the spend-whatever-it-takes years of the show in the first half of the 2000s. Eventually, it devolved into a kind of self-parody, and you see a lot less of it in recent … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Having just returned from the Microsoft world premiere event showing off the newly named Kinect camera for Xbox 360 (formerly known as Project Natal), we're left with a burning question. The games demoed at the event ran the gamut from titles that let you drive a car, boat, and mine cart--all with graphics that would make a Nintendo Wii blush. But cool hardware aside, who's going to want to play these games?

Behind the pomp and circumstance of packing a college arena with white-robed journalists and an entire troop of Cirque du Soleil dancers, the real stars of the evening were the Kinect camera and games. About half a dozen were demoed by a collection of faux families, some suspended upside down or in mid-air, but all the footage shown was clearly pretaped, and not an actual live use of the Kinect camera (which we admit would have been difficult with the light show and acrobatics going on at the same time).

However, as impressive as the event itself was, the first round of Kinect games demoed seemed, well, exactly like first-generation games. There were several variations on using your hands and body movements to drive a vehicle, from a car to a raft to a kind of mine cart (with your avatar body on top, contorting to grab icons).

More promising was a yoga app, as well as a virtual pet. At the event, we actually snagged a tiny stuffed animal, which included a scannable code--we assume it would then place that particular animal in the game (which is called Kinanimals). Somewhat more strained was a follow-the-moves dance game, but given the success of television programs such as "So You Think You Can Dance," we may be on the wrong side of the cultural zeitgeist on that one.

But after all those game presentations, we're struck by how similar they are to games we've already seem for platforms including the PlayStation EyeToy (which originated on the PS2 in 2004) and Nintendo Wii. The EyeToy is a particularly apt comparison as it also used only hand and body movements, not a control stick like the Wii or upcoming PlayStation Move. … Read more

LOS ANGELES--After more than a year of speculation, we finally know what Microsoft's new motion-control system is called. For those that have referred to it for a year as Project Natal, meet Kinect for Xbox 360.

On Sunday night, at the University of Southern California's Galen Center here, and during a special performance by Cirque du Soleil, Microsoft finally and formally pulled back the wraps on its much-anticipated system, now known as Kinect, but originally the work of the Israeli company 3DV.

After sitting through (actually standing, as the press was placed on the floor of the arena for a couple of hours with no seats) the performance, in which the Cirque's performers acted out and demonstrated a number of ways that Kinect can be used, my first impression is that Microsoft has hit on something with some serious potential. But at least as demonstrated Sunday, that potential hasn't been fully realized.

It was tempting to think that Microsoft was taking Kinect a little too seriously during the performance, given the scale and scope of the event (more on that in a bit), but it's clear that the company has a system on its hands that it plans to incorporate widely across its video gaming and digital living room environments.

And while it's too soon to tell exactly how Kinect will be used, and what software is being developed for it--Microsoft will say a lot more Monday morning at its formal E3 press conference--one thing became clear Sunday night: with Kinect, and a sports game, and an exercise game for it, Microsoft is, among other things, putting Nintendo and its Wii, its Balance Board, its Wii Fit and Wii Sports squarely in its sights.

… Read more