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Microsoft Announces Halo 4, TV For Xbox Live, Kinect Star Wars
Today Microsoft held their E3 press conference, announcing a number of major new games and services for the Xbox 360 platform. Halo 4 was briefly revealed, and is currently planned for a holiday 2012 launch. In addition, the original Halo is getting an HD remake. Smash indie hit Minecraft will be coming to the 360 this winter, with support for Kinect. In fact, there is a huge push from many game-makers to bring Kinect integration to the next level — from a new Fable game where you can use your hands to cast spells, to EA Sports titles, to Kinect Star Wars. Topping it off is an update to Xbox Live which will bring live TV to the console (including DVR functions), controllable by voice through Kinect. YouTube and voice search through Bing are coming as well. The update is planned for this fall. Those interested can catch a video of the press conference, which includes all the relevant game trailers, at G4TV.
Seems like Activision and Microsoft are going toe to toe in the grand "Squeeze the most money out of an IP" competition. Oh great...
I swore I read somewhere that Halo 3 was the last one, and that's why they went the prequel route after that.
Maybe I'm misremembering.
Has Johnny Depp signed on for 40 million yet (I may be cross-remembering my "our series is done at 3" press releases here)?
This was foretold by LRR almost four years ago: http://loadingreadyrun.com/videos/view/228/Halo-The-Future-of-Gaming
Steve Jobs took a dig at XBOX Live today during the WWDC. "In just 9 months we have 50 million Game Center users. To put that into perspective Xbox Live has been around for about eight years and they have around 30 million users." It's not the same. A one time purchase of Angry birds doesn't compare to a subscribing, active user of XBOX live. For all of Microsoft's missteps and gaffs (and there have been plenty), XBOX live seems to be the one thing they got right. It's a great UI, and it has some great content from outside providers (Netflix, ESPN). Make my XBOX a DVR and stream quality TV through it, and I don't need much else for my entertainment needs. If we could just upgrade the blasted XBOX360 hardware, and get better QA, I'd be good to go.
I bring nothing to the table.
The 360 has a JVM? Or are they going to do a half assed port in XNA?
Also, I guess I shouldn't be surprised Notch sold exclusivity to MS.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
But I'm finding myself really, really uninterested in what's coming out. These AAA titles get so caught up in the extraneous BS that they forget to put a fun game in there. And so many overblown, uninteresting stories! A minimal storyline can be fine but the more involved it is, the better it had be. A big story that's stupid is worse than a minimal story that's good because the poorness is staring you in the face. An actor might not be a song and dance guy. If he doesn't do a routine in the film, you won't miss it. But if he tries to do a Fred Astaire scene and falls woefully short, now your attention is drawn to how awful it is. Do it right or leave it out. You make a big, stupid story be front and center and it's awful then it's just ruining the whole experience. You have to spend all this time paying attention to how it sucks.
And sadly even if the story is interesting the gameplay itself just isn't any fun. Poor controls make it feel like more of a chore than something that becomes engrossingly fun.
I think it's blockbuster syndrome. The more splosions in a movie, generally the worse the plot. The more money thrown at a AAA title, the more focus-grouped and pedestrian the results will be. Smaller titles still take chances. That's when they get bought up by the big boys and turned into zombie franchises.
There are some exceptions. I still think GTAIV was very impressive. But that's a very rare bird.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
This announcement happens to coincide with the Macworld or whatever they call it now. It couldnt be a method to distract attention and have people think of a cool xbox 360 and not a mac
http://saveie6.com/
Might be me, but that Star Wars title seems to lag quite a bit whenever that guy jumped, or swung the 'lightsaber'. I don't know that I could play a game with that much lag.
Also, where are the other controls for that game? What controls the walking around? I didn't see the guy on stage with any kind of controlling device (other than Kinect "lightsaber, on!" and jumping about) so I'm left to assume this is a "on a rail" type of game? What if I don't want to be "on a rail" and follow exactly the path laid out for me? Maybe I want to check out the corners, look for hidden items, secrets, etc?
I think the 'Star Wars' titles are getting a bit stale. This looks like another game set in the Clone Wars. And they're back at Bespin? What about the expanded universe?
If we're going to re-tread old ground, I'd like to see someone do a really awesome remake of the Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 game. I think the PlayStation Move would be a great fit for that - very little lag, and it sort of feels like a lightsaber, anyway. With the Navigation controller, you can do FPS stuff, and use the Move controller as a point & shoot "gun" (similar to Killzone 3.) But personally, when I played that game, once I got the lightsaber I never used any of the other weapons.
I hope the system-wide search lets me disable particular video sources.
My ISP does not provide ESPN3, I do not use "Zune Video", and I do not have a "Hulu Plus" account. I won't want searches to ever show me content from those three sources.
Think Microsoft will accommodate me?
I notice you still can't control where your character moves in Star Wars. He follows a pre-defined path, and you just swipe at enemies as you approach them. What I'd really like to see is Kinect + some sort of hand-held controller for moving around. Then you'd have a truly immersive experience; ducking to avoid fire, using your body for emotes, crouching with a sniper rifle, throwing a grenade...
I can't believe no-one's done it yet.
What about tv? the ISP have there own and cap downloads to keep from useing there data line from useing IP based TV and they own alot of the RSN's. The only CSN channel that may show up is CSN Chicago as Comcast only owns 20%, maybe some of the FSN's, root sports is iffy part fox and part directv. espn maybe but the ISP deals with them and epsn 3 may get in the way. MLB network likely not. NHL network part comcast owned NBA tv maybe yes NFL network maybe with thursday night football games at a added cost. other comcast / nbc channels may not want to be part of this. SHOW TIME, HBO, STARS, Cinemax, and epix likely at a added cost. ON line NBA LP, MLB EI, NHL CI maybe or maybe still on there own.
Fable game where you can cast spells with your hands? Star Wars Kinect game?
I remember the exact moment the Wii went from Cool to Lame for me. About 20 minutes into Spiderman 2. Likely the best spiderman game released. Captured the look and feel. Had great voice acting. Top notch product. I highly recommend it. That is on a traditional controller. After 20 minutes of punching the air in front of me, to mimic shooting webs, the Wii went from Must Buy to Never Buy.
Waving your hands to play a game sounds cool but sucks in reality. Better put you need to design the game from the first word in the design document to be a motion game. Tacking motion control onto other games is a waste of time.
The problem is that if you follow that advice you end up with a single platform game. Really a single sub-platform because if you've done your design work right the game will suck if played with a traditional controller. People don't want to take that risk.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Can anyone tell me what the summary means when it says MS is bringing "live TV" to the Xbox?
Does that mean Sid Caesar is coming back?
You are welcome on my lawn.
How abut making it possible to use regular terabyte harddisks?
Either that or you're just getting older. Generally it is safe to assume it is yourself changing and becoming bored with games rather than games becoming boring. Same with music or movies. Not sure how old you are but when I was younger, I could become engrossed by the stupidest, most trivial of video games. Some (most) of those Atari/Coleco/etc games were really pretty shitty if you think about it, and they're even worse if you try to go back and play them now. And how about that Atari joystick? Terrible controller with a single button. But damn if I didn't sit in front of them for hours at a time, trying to jump the pixilated stick figure of an avatar over chasms and shit. Hell, just how many 2D side scrolling action games WERE there back in the day?
Also, there's the fact that we tend to forget all the shitty stuff from the past and just remember the highlights. Take any five year stretch and you could pick out a dozen really cool games and that's all you'll remember. 10 years from now you (or your kids) wll be able to do the same thing about the games now. GTAIV is just one of your picks.
What's odd is that you would even expect to like a majority of games out there. I mean, on one hand you claim that developers pander to focus groups for mass appeal but then you expect a game that "takes risks" to be good. You obviously have very specific tastes so you should expect the majority of games to not appeal to you. But you know what? Those blockbuster games make money because other peopel like them. If the games were the problem, they wouldn't be selling.
I was hoping for something more interesting in the Star Wars games they demoed.
I guess it's not 'there' yet.
The visual were quite nice though.
Also it appears too scripted, like the old Dragon's Lair game...
I suppose it is too much to ask for today for the game to be open-ended. Don't know why though, there is enough computing power to enable something very sophisticated but it appears their resources are not used efficiently enough.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Does it also understand Klingon?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
That Star Wars Kid from a fews years back is finally gonna get his revenge once Star Wars comes out and he can use the Kinect controller.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
Personally i don't see this working. i can play Minecraft on my PC with an Xbox controller (xpadder) and even then i still need to bind my mouse to the sticks. not that that's a bad thing, but traditionally games for PC are a bit more complicated that games for console. also the whole Xbox controller for the PC is more of a toy to show off to friends than effective way to play games like WoW or LoL.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
So, where in the XBOX 360 do I plug in the CableCARD, or will it be via another add-on USB device? And will I still be at the whims of a cable company's Switched Digital Video tuning adapter over what channels I will be able to tune when I want or will support for that be included (and will it function reliably)?
I ask because Time Warner Cable seems to want to sabotage any DVR that isn't their own, designing unreliability into their cable boxes and tuning adapters to that end. (And they don't support HBO GO either.)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Sure, we finally get a dumbed-down version on Netflix in Canada, but our government doesn't want us to pay for subscription cloud services, that would only slow down the pirating....
At about 180 Watts power consumption, streaming tv with an Xbox 360 is not environmentally responsible. In comparison the Apple TV uses about 3 Watts (and at 10 Watts an iPad even has a display).
Ignore for a moment the cost of cooling. Then unplugging an existing Xbox 360 and plugging in an Apple TV 2 will save 0.177 kWh for each hour of video that one watches. How much does one have to watch at $0.12 per kWh to make up for the $99 retail price of an Apple TV 2? That makes 825 kWh, or 4,661 hours of video. How many hours of video do people watch per month?
From that video the Star Wars Kinect game reminds me a lot of Dragon's Lair. Totally scripted and just a matter of pushing the right button (or waving your hand) at the right time.
And those robots had worse aim than the storm troopers in the original movie.
"Waving your hands to play a game sounds cool but sucks in reality."
No. Lay off the Cheetos and soft drinks and get some exercise. No, getting up from your console to walk to the fridge is not an exercise. No, drinking diet Coke is not a diet.
I thought they were done with Halo or was that just Bungie? That franchise needs to die.
awesome news on halo 4 and halo remake :)
The guy comments about environmental responsibility and you change the subject to $$? [...] 1kWh generated in america puts out 1.3lbs CO2.
Only commensurable quantities, meaning those in the same units, can be compared. So in order to compare the price of an Apple TV 2 to the environment responsibility of less carbon dioxide emitted at the power plant, one needs to convert environmental responsibility into units of dollars. Should I use the price of a carbon offset?
Wake me when you have a new console or a new idea, ok, folks?
And putting messed up Windows logos on Apple stores doesn't count as a new idea, by the way.
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