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

ESPN

[tweek]

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.

Re:"Custom kinect port"

[kidgenius]

Yep, pretty much. But sony is still king of the "custom connector,"

Really?? PS3 uses standard USB cables for its controllers. It uses a standard harddrive inside you can easily upgrade. It uses standard bluetooth to connect any headset you want? Custom connector? More MS than Sony from a console standpoint

Re:No blu-ray

[shutdown -p now]

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.

Re:Kinect demo faked

[fcrick]

I also work at M$ (contractor!) but not on Kinect and those demos were definitely legit. My office happens happens to be near where it's worked on, and I've playtested it briefly on several occasions. I think today's demo and the hype doesn't nearly do the platform justice - I've already gone to GameStop to (try to) pre-order...it's frikkin' amazing.

If you watch the video carefully, you'll notice there are are essentially two types of use of the platform:

1. Most games seem to have a delay between when you move and when that movement shows up on screen. These games are either ones where you notice something you have to react to, you react, and then you see something happen after a delay, or ones where you sorta 'pre-act' moves you know are coming. If you watch the video where they are avoiding things on the track, you can see them move their bodies early, anticipating that the game won't get the move in time if they jump in time with what they see.

2. The dance game seemed to do a kind of post-analysis to see if what you did is correct - I think this is very similar to existing singing games out there - you calibrate it so you can sing with the music as you hear it, but the scoring mechanism doesn't come back with how well you're doing as fast as you're doing it. I'm pretty sure they must be doing the same thing here - you dance to what you see, and the scoring chimes in a moment later with "yup, that last move was great" or whatever. If you look on the right side you can see the upcoming moves - that's how you know what to do next - also you can see yourself moving on the right in a small box - i think if you look there you'll see yourself delayed.