Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.

4 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. "Custom kinect port" by Bert64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Custom kinect port = it uses some proprietary connector so you won't be able to use it with anything else, will it even be possible to connect it to an original 360?

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  2. Re:No blu-ray by MHolmesIV · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As opposed to the PS3 Slim, which actively removed features, you mean?

  3. Kinect demo faked by Jim+Hall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'll admit, I was really impressed with the linked video. Until I watched it again and realized that it's faked. The person "controlling" the action isn't quite in sync with what's on screen. Sometimes the actor is slightly ahead of the "game" (could be lag, I thought) and other times isn't keeping up with what's on screen.

    Even the linked video comments that the video is likely a scripted demo. But I'm not convinced it's real yet. (I'm sure it works, but clearly not ready for prime-time, nor even E3.)

    1. Re:Kinect demo faked by Vitani · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is only my opinion, but I believe the video/gif which has been circulating of the guy Kintected to Star Wars from Sunday night was, indeed, faked. He was just copying what he saw on the screen. I think this is the case because the exact same video was shown during Monday's conference. *However* I do think Kinect is real, and works, as all of the demos at Monday's conference appeared believable, and there were even a few unresponsive moments which you'd expect from any advanced technology.

      As a side note, I'm a massive Nintendo fanboy, I've never even considered buying a console from the "other two", but after watching the conference last night, I'm very *very* tempted to buy a 360 for a nice voice & gesture controlled HD media centre! Well done Microsoft (can't believe I just said that!)