E3 Press Conferences: Microsoft

Microsoft started out E3 with a trailer and demonstration on the next Call of Duty game, Call of Duty Black Ops. Modern Warfare 2 was fun online, but I was never really a big fan of the Call of Duty series. Black Ops looks beautiful, though, and looks to include battles off the ground this time, as the player hops into a helicopter and starts blowing shit up. The environments of the jungle level are bright and lively, showing war games don't necessarily have to be shades of grey or blue. The game will be released November 11th.

It's announced all Call of Duty material will be released from now until 2012 first on the Xbox 360 through an exclusive deal between Activision and Microsoft.

This year marks the 10-year anniversary of XBox, opening ways to transform the gaming genre. The biggest shooters are mentioned, Halo: Reach, Gears of War 3, and Call of Duty. Project Natal's official name is announced as Kinect.

Hideo Kojima is called out to the stage. Kojima mentions MGS Rising and promises footage before he passes the torch, so to speak, to his executive producer.

Metal Gear Solid Rising trailer begins, some heavily armored soldier is seen walking around a corridor before Raiden bursts onto the scene, slicing the humanoid in half. The logo is shown, followed by Raiden pretty much cutting up everything in his way, including people, pillars, vehicles, and even shows a man get sliced into several pieces while in the air. The trailer ends with Raiden slicing up a watermelon with precision. Looks very entertaining.

Afterwards, it's announced the remainder of games shown today will be XBox 360 exclusives. Cliff Bleszinski is called out onto the stage, and prepares to show off Gears of War 3 four-player co-op capabilities. Marcus spears a Locust with the bayonet at the end of his gun, and the action is pretty intense. It appears you can trade weapons to teammates now. A large tentacle looking beast comes out of the ground, causing a new enemy that the Locust start running to fight off only to be obliterated. New up close moves look possible, such as kicking enemies into one another, or planting a 'nade on a meat shield before throwing them into an enemy. A boss with several limbs or tentacles appears, and starts charging at the group at full speed. The demo ends as the boss lunges at the group in a cut scene. Cliffy B announces a new game mode, Beast, but says nothing about it before leaving.

Peter Molyneux comes out and begins with Fable III information, happening five years after Fable II. Fable III will ship October 26th. A trailer is shown, though the audio is a bit low. The trailer shows off that you're more than an adventurer this time, and more of a revolutionary. The game looks wonderful, and looks like the action is a little more intense and flashier than before.

It's announced that Microsoft has a new exclusive partner. A trailer shows a warrior looking like a Spartan or Roman covered in dirt and blood. Codename Kingdoms is the title revealed, but little else is really said or known.

Halo has sold 34 million copies and 2 billion hours have been played online, and Marcus Leto is introduced to show more on Halo: Reach. It's said it's the most ambitious game Bungie has worked on. The premiere for the campaign is shown, and several Spartans are shown getting dropped off on a battlefield about to begin. The Spartans seem a little more talkative than Master Chief, but even for a drab battlefield there's still plenty of color, both in weapon ammunition, the brightness of the sky, and several other parts of the environment. It appears there is a female Spartan in the group, which seems like the new thing to do (as both Gears and Halo have a female amongst the group of men). It appears the Covenant has invaded an ally base, and has killed nearly everyone off. The player ends up climbing a ladder and jumping into a spaceship, flying out into outer space for a battle above the atmosphere. The trailer ends to a round of applause.

Kinect is talked about once again (after bragging about Microsoft bringing gaming to many, and then adding music, movies, and social networking). Waving to the camera will cause it to recognize you and log you in instantly, and waving again brings up an easy Kinect menu. It's also revealed that speaking will cause you to select items, such as saying "Zune" or "Facebook." You can also pause by saying "XBox: Pause" and resume play by saying "XBox: Play." It's pretty incredible, and waving your hand works like the cursor on the Wii. I'm getting stoked ALL over again...

Kinect and XBox Live is announced to be available in every country the 360 is sold, and that XBox Live will connect to Windows 7. There will be a new option called "Video Kinect," which will allow you to video chat without use of a headset. You can chat with people on XBox, or Windows Messenger through this option. A demo of the video chat option is pretty interesting, but sounds VERY scripted. It's revealed that you can watch videos and movies WHILE video chatting. Kinect will follow you as you move automatically, which is pretty neat so camera adjustment is needed like it is with the Playstation Eye or the XBox Live Motion cameras. The video chat also uses voice command to close as well.

AN ESPN 360 FEATURE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED! I'm not a big sports nut, but it looks like games can be streamed or viewed through ESPN 3. The trailer shows a SportsCenter clip revealing the ESPN feature will be exclusive to the 360. The two hosts of SportsCenter come out to introduce the feature, a community channel that includes several different sports with the ability to show live games. It also allows you to vote for who you want to win the sporting events. Voice commands will also work for voting, as well as request replays. There's also trivia games that will appear at the bottom of the screen during the game, and ESPN.com will update scores, and you can change sports leagues mid-game without going to a menu. ESPN will be no additional cost once on XBox Live.

Kudo Tsunoda, the creative director for Kinect, enters the stage and talks about just how easy it is to play without a controller or without memorizing button layouts for those that don't normally play games. Six Kinect launch games are announced, that will be played without a controller.

A little girl is brought on the stage to play with a tiger named Skittles. The tiger cub interacts with the girl's rubbing hands, and happily listens to the girl's words. He reacts and repeats the actions the girl does, like jumping and spinning. The girl hides when the tiger runs off to get a toy, and the tiger looks around trying to find the girl. While not a game I would own, it does look cute, and is revealed as Kinectimals.

The next game shown is Kinect Sports, and crowd interaction is shown to start off. Two players come out, their avatars on screen and follow the running and jumping motions during the hurdle race they play. Think Wii Sports, but better. A Kinect Sports trailer is shown with bowling, ping pong, boxing, olympic and track, volleyball, and more.

My stream died a moment, but as it returns, it shows an avatar style racing game called Kinect Joy Ride. Using an air steering wheel, you race in what looks like a kind of Mario Kart without weapons. It's cute, but racing games seem like the one game I would WANT to have a wheel or peripheral for...

The next game announced is Kinect Adventures, showing a guy on a train car moving his body around to connect tokens and avoid obstacles. As a second player joins in, the game instantly splits into split screen, and several camera moments appear that take pictures of you making an ass of yourself. A second mini game is shown, looking like a co-op event with two girls on a raft, having to work together to move the raft around. The pictures taken can be put on facebook "or anywhere else on the web."

Next is a trailer from Ubisoft on what looks like a "follow along" exercise game. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved is revealed as its title, and a demonstration is shown with an Ubisoft representative. Menus and features follow your body movements around, and the game can measure your height and physical dimensions. The demo shows a coach along with a silhouette of your person, and you follow along with your coach, with prompts in the upper right corner further explaining what to do. It looks as though the game will likely measure body mass more than weight like Nintendo's $100 scale, Wii Fit.

Harmonix and Mtv Games brings us Dance Central, a Kinect dance game that either looks to teach people dance moves, or makes people look like drunken assholes. It looks like Just Dance, only a million times better. The woman on stage dancing is obviously skilled, and shows a pretty neat demo of the game. The head of Harmonix, Alex , pretty much disses games that make you "dance on mats or pushing buttons" and says this is much more interactive and better. Downloadable content is promised, as is Lady Gaga, unfortunately. A mode called "Break it Down" reveals a teaching mode that helps people that suck at dancing get better. The game actually looks like it could be pretty enjoyable.

Kinect is revealed to be released on November 4th in North America this year. There will be 15 launch titles for the camera-console, and a trailer for a Star Wars game to be released next year is shown. It shows you, the jedi, use your lightsaber to reflect shots and use the force to move tanks. The trailer ends with a clash against Lord Vader himself. No release date is fully announced.

A racing game is shown next, Forza with Kinect, and movement of your head shows more of the interior of the car as well as the ability to look around corners. The game is controlled with your hands in the ten-and-two positions. A new trailer shows an interactive demo of being able to walk around your car to inspect specific parts of it. You can open the door, sit down, and close the door, with a realistic interior; in this case, a Ferrari is shown. The game will be out in 2011.

After a monologue about the past and the future and Kinect, the new 360 console is revealed. Sleeker, smaller, with a built in wireless adapter and a 250 GB hard drive, it's said the console will stay the same price as the current 120 GB hard drive unit at $299. It's then revealed that the console will be shipping TODAY AND WILL BE AVAILABLE LATER THIS WEEK!! Anyone who physically attended the event is already receiving their 360 consoles today, free of charge... Lucky bastards...

With that, the 360 conference is finished, and with all the information on Kinect, the footage of Halo, Gears, and MGS Rising, the addition of ESPN, and the new model 360 with the bombshell of its release date of today, it's going to seriously be hard for Sony and Nintendo to top Microsoft. Don't count them out yet, though - E3 has only begun.


Excitements:
-New 360 released today
-MGS Rising gameplay footage
-Slew of cool features with Natal

Letdowns:
-Some Natal games are already starting to look like shovelware or recycled Wii titles
-Nothing announced was particularly new - even the 360 design and new Kinect name were leaked last night
-Only four or so titles were shown that weren't Natal exclusive


Stay tuned, as Gaming Everything will give you more from the EA and Ubisoft media briefings today and will return with the Sony and Nintendo conferences tomorrow!