First off, I don’t like the name change from Natal to Kinect, I’ve spent the entire 90 minutes accidentally referring to it as Natal. I guess this is another Revolution to Wii name changes that just happens.
As someone who has followed E3 for nearly a decade, I’m right to be pessimistic about the products on show as nearly all of them are not live or accurate representations. Trust me on that statement. So when Microsoft starts their press conference with Call of Duty: Black Ops footage with the default interchange font from Final Cut Pro, you don’t get off to a good start with the experienced critics who can notice this shit.
From the selection of hardcore games demonstrated on stage today, most of them pretty much like your usual sequels to their former titles such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Fable 3 and Gears of War 3, all with the exceptions of Halo: Reach (which has certainly seen some improvements to the Halo engine and formula) and Metal Gear Solid: Rising (which demonstrated some interesting dismemberment and physics technologies). The exclusive Crytek game didn’t even feature any gameplay footage so I’m not even going to raise any discussion on this.
For the rest of the presentation, the demonstrations were all based around Kinect, some featuring some great applications of the technology as well as some not-so-great uses. Let me split this up into two sections of what I thought to be good and bad.
The good products from what I could gather included some of the dashboard gestures (waving at the camera to sign in, controlling video and audio playback [we’ve all looked around a room before to see who last had the remote or controller] and video chat [though ending conversations with “Xbox, end chat” is far too inhuman and should be a wave gesture or something instead]) and Harmonix’s Dance Central, which looked to be a pretty fun, solid game I believe even I can enjoy; maybe that’s due to the fact I’m a sucker for music games in general, although this one seems entirely different from what the rest of the genre has to offer.
As for the bad? Well… there’s a LOT of it. Let me make this clear: If you’re going to do a ‘live’ demonstration of your motion sensing technology, don’t try and pull the wool over our eyes with the fake actors trying to make the game look more fluid and responsive than it really is.
From this video, they are claiming that they have somehow managed to get the response time to a negative value. Either that or they’re clearly bullshitting us.
Next on the list, the casual games. Exactly how many of these games were literally ideas stolen directly from the Wii?
I know they say imitation is the greatest form of flattery but this is a bit too much Microsoft. The Kinect Sports package was literally the exact same experience you would find on the Wii with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, except with a bit more shine to it.
Kinectamals was a complete fake from start to finish, the child actor (although pretty decent) was performing completely different actions to the floating pair of hands shown on screen. Again, this is a case of I’m not doubting the technology’s power, but could you at least be open and honest about it with us? Also, can you say Petz or Nintendogz?
Kinect Adventure seemed to be the most promising from the Kinect-branded series, although the social networking integration seems completely pointless. I can’t imagine that many people would want to show off their most embarrassing moments for all their friends to see on Facebook. Nice to see the feature is there though.
Joy Ride was a free Xbox Live game I was highly looking forward to after seeing it at least year’s E3 press conference. This year however, all my hopes had gone completely out of the window, turning this fun-looking game into a [now] paid motion controlled casual racer. I guess I’ll go back to playing the free, awesome and superior TrackMania Nations Forever.
Speaking of racers, nice to know Turn 10 decided to just slap on some motion controls onto their racing sim, you know, the one they design to compete with PolyphonyDigital’s Gran Turismo series and represent ‘the greatest racing experience on any platform’. I have many friends who play Forza, all of which are petrolheads or motorsport fanatics and some of which play on some seriously hardcore settings, switching to manual transmission, clutch control, no ASM and TCS etc. and I can assure you the last thing they want to see added to this game was a stripped down basic control scheme dumbing down the cars the developers set out to simulate in the first place. If you want casual racing, then that’s what Joy Ride is for, but Forza simply does not need this. What Forza should use that they demonstrated was the head tracking functions, allowing you to look around your car and the track ahead of you. This coupled with a controller or steering wheel peripheral would make a great experience and I hope to see Turn 10 implement this hybrid set-up.
The new Kinect-powered Star Wars title from LucasArts demonstrated a pretty neat ‘hardcore’ application of Kinect. I’m a Star Wars fan and an even bigger LucasArts fan so I’m usually a sucker for their stuff, but seeing this game move ‘on rails’ (a term used for games when the player has no control over movement - examples of this would be light-gun rail shooters such as Time Crisis and Silent Scope) was fairly disappointing. This just further proves not all genres can be achieved without a controller, such genres cater towards controller-based motion controls such as PlayStation Move and Wii MotionPlus. Oh, and in case you didn’t gather from the animated GIF above, the demonstration wasn’t live either. Not good guys.
Another main part of the demonstration was the addition of ESPN (3?) to the services available on Xbox Live (and exclusive to Gold members). Although the service looked fantastic, featuring some superb use of motion controls, slick UI and a wide range of content, what does this mean for consumers outside of the US?
This alongside Netflix is now two features everyone outside the US is unable to experience, and for the same Xbox Live subscription fees US consumers pay. Next time Microsoft, please don’t use words like ‘worldwide’ when you don’t actually mean worldwide and you know your products cater to a global audience.
Finally I get to mention something with no flaws!
That’s right, the new Xbox 360 SKU. It’s smaller, thinner, glossier and quieter, it features improved ventilation, and hopefully no more red rings (take that lead-free solder!). They’ve upped the storage to match the somewhat recent Super Elite SKU, included 802.11n wireless LAN and reduced the price to match the regular Xbox 360 at $299 (we’ll have to wait for international pricing).
As someone with 4 broken Xbox 360s sat in his lounge (their warranties are all invalid or out of date), I’ve been highly put off by purchasing another Xbox to have it crap out on me once again and this new SKU is the answer to that problem for me. Best of all, it’s out this week. Props to Microsoft for keeping this surprise under wraps until last night’s web ad leak.
Well, that pretty much covers my thoughts on Microsoft’s E3 press conference, like with every press conference there’s the good, the bad and the lame. If you watched the event yourself I’d like to hear some of your thoughts on the products that were showcased.
Thanks for reading, hopefully you shall see some similar posts from me for the upcoming Sony and Nintendo’s press conferences.
