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Microsoft Unveils Smaller Xbox 360 Model, Kinect Details

Posted by Soulskill on from the might-as-well-call-it-a-slim dept.

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.

5 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. ESPN by tweek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Kinect is exciting and I'll get it but the biggest announcement had to be the ESPN agreement. That's a cable killer right there depending on how blackout/regional rules apply.

    --
    "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
    1. Re:ESPN by mgblst · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, you are right. It is not for everybody. Congratulations on joining the camp that if it is not for me, then it is shit. Seems to be a very popular group here on slashdot.

      Of course, some people don't spend all their time playing video games.

  2. Re:"Custom kinect port" by Tordre · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The game trailer post show had that grey shirt guy on and stated the extra port is just for power, you can use it with an old xbox but you will need to plug it in to the wall separately.

  3. Re:Reliable? by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Do you consider sounding like a small jet turbine to be a problem?

    I do.

    I'm wondering if that problem has gone away yet.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  4. Re:No blu-ray by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does Blu-Ray matter at this point?

    Actually, yes, it does. Two of my (non-geek) friends are looking at buying PS3 specifically because of BluRay support - and said that otherwise they would have probably taken Xbox.