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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.

3 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"
  2. Re:"Custom kinect port" by kidgenius · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  3. 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.