Microsoft Unveils Smaller Xbox 360 Model, Kinect Details

E3 kicked off today, and Microsoft took advantage of its early keynote presentation to show off a ton of new games and features for the Xbox 360. The biggest news for the very near future is that they're releasing a smaller, revamped version of the console, with immediate availability. It's black, it comes with a 250GB HDD and built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi support, and it's priced at $299. Microsoft also put a release date on Kinect, the motion control scheme formerly known as Project Natal: November 4 in the US. It will launch with 15 games, mostly casual-oriented, several of which were demonstrated on-stage. Many new Kinect features were shown as well, such as the dashboard interface, video chat (with support for playing movies both parties can watch), and a partnership with ESPN to provide live and on-demand sports, all controllable with hand gestures and voice commands. (It presently includes college football and basketball, soccer, the NBA, and MLB.) Also notable is a partnership with LucasArts for a Kinect Star Wars game, a fitness game from Ubisoft, and a Forza racing game that uses Kinect and allows players to inspect the cars with an impressive level of detail. Engadget's liveblog of the event has a bunch of pictures from the demonstrations, or you can read a more detailed play-by-play at Ars.

Comments

Re:"Custom kinect port"

[gravos]

Yep, pretty much. But sony is still king of the "custom connector," "custom memory stick," custom every damn thing.

And can anyone guess why the slim 360 is more expensive when they're releasing an expensive add-on like Kinect?

Re:LOL!

[Gizzmonic]

Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 have much better graphics than anything on the 360. To me, that's proof that it's a more powerful system. From a practical standpoint it doesn't really matter since most cross-platform developers start on the 360 and then port to PS3. Oh, and I guess I'm a fucking fanboy for stating the facts. Ram it up your anonymous asshole just like you do in the glory holes!