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.

Comments

Actisoft...Microvision...whatever

[xMrFishx]

Seems like Activision and Microsoft are going toe to toe in the grand "Squeeze the most money out of an IP" competition. Oh great...

Re:Actisoft...Microvision...whatever

[Skarecrow77]

SquareEnix has a HUGE head start on either of them.

Re:Actisoft...Microvision...whatever

[gman003]

Sort of. All the numbered games are individual - VI has no characters in common with I, IV or IX. They have made a few sequels - X-2 is a sequel to X, FFIV: The After Years is a sequel to IV, VII has both a prequel and sequel game (Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus, respectively), etc. And, if you want to get technical, VII, X and X-2 are technically in the same universe, but that's a rather obscure fact, and there's no shared characters between VII and X.

Normally, there are certain constants in the series. There is almost always a character named Cid, but they share nothing besides the name. The gameplay is relatively similar in most of them - I and XII are closer in gameplay than, say, Quake and Quake III. There are certain common elements (airships), certain musical themes carried throughout the series (da da-da da, da da daa da-daaa), and character archetypes are usually the same (ie. there's Chick with a Staff, Big Scary Guy Who Is Often Black, Creepy Goth Guy, etc.). And shout-outs are common, especially in remakes (see: Gilgamesh). However, none of the main games is dependent on any of the others - it's like how George Lucas has shout-outs to THX1138 in most of his films. The fans like it, the developers like it, everyone else doesn't even notice it.

Normally, it would just be seen as sort of a label for the creators - you would see "FFVIII" and think "Oh, it's from the guys who made FFI through VII, and I (liked those/didn't like those) and will make my purchase decision based on that". In fact, most of the series was made by a few people - Nobuo Uematsu composed the entire soundtrack for the first nine games, and worked on several others; Yoshitaka Amano designed the characters for the first six; Hironobu Sakaguchi designed the gameplay for the first eleven. So, for a while, it was sort of like a band's name - you would know "Final Fantasy = these people", and know that meant it was probably a good game.

Unfortunately, that's no longer the case. Most, if not all, of the people who made the classic Final Fantasies (IV-IX, by my count) have left. Amano only designs the title logo now; Uematsu left but is sometimes brought back in as a contractor; Sakaguchi left and made his own game company. Most players agree that the past few games have been markedly different, although whether they're still good or not is up for debate.

Compounding the problem is that Square is sort of franchise-whoring the series. Spin-offs are far more common - Final Fantasy VII alone has a prequel game (Crisis Core, generally liked), a sequel game (Dirge of Cerberus, generally disliked), a prequel anime OVA (Before Crisis), a sequel full-length movie (Advent Children), and has had guest appearances in far, far too many games (I know of many, many people who only played Kingdom Hearts to see Sephiroth and Cloud one more time). You could legitimately call that single "game" a series in it's own right.

And then there's Dissidia. Think "Square Enix's version of Super Smash Bros.". A game that, judged on its own merits, sucks. If you were completely ignorant of who the characters were, you would hate the game. It's a gameplay mess, the story is convoluted and pointless, and it's repetitive and boring. However, it was well-received because it had the main hero and villain of every major Final Fantasy game. And yeah, it's cool to see Kefka and Sephiroth duke it out. That would be like seeing Darth Vader and Darth Maul fight - instant nerd awesomeness. But it taught Square that they could sell a game purely on the Final Fantasy name. (I'm aware of the earlier Mystic Quest/Legends games, but those had the distinction of actually being worth playing on their own merits).

So, to answer your question, no, Square Enix doesn't actually have a lead on Activision re: franchise whoring. But they're catching up fast.

Re:Actisoft...Microvision...whatever

[hairyfeet]

Hey now we should give MSFT credit! After all Halo singlehandedly helps keep drunken fratboys safely contained on the X360. I know that when I play online games after a Halo release the amount of "nigger fag" teabagger bullshit drops WAY down, thus showing Halo is doing its job and keeping the fratboys away from the rest of us, yay!

And personally i hope MSFT and Sony milk the living shit out of the X360 and PS3 respectively, thank you VERY much! I LIKE being able to play all the newest games on a $60 HD4850 thank you! I LIKE that I get a great framerate with my 2 year old AMD quad, I LIKE that it allows me to spend my money on new multi-TB drives instead of buying a new CPU and GPU yearly like I did in the late 90s/ early 00s, I LIKE that I can sell my customers $500 PCs that let them game and enjoy HD 1080p on their new widescreen TVs!

So while I know that after the PS4 and X720 come out it won't be 6 months before PCs stomp them again, if it even takes that long, with all the games being optimized for the consoles it seems to take about a year to a year and a half before their shitty unoptimized code runs well on PCs, simply because their code is usually buggy shite. So the longer MSFT and Sony milk the current gen the longer guys like me can enjoy nice HD gaming on the cheap while having oodles of games to choose from that all run great from GOG, Steam, and Amazon. So go MSFT, and take Sony with you! Milk that shit!

Not bad.

[lwap0]

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.

Re:Not bad.

[h4rr4r]

Roku or PS3 is then a better way to go if you are optimizing for money. The yearly subscription would cover the cost of a Roku. I will not pay to watch something I already pay to watch.

Why they feel the need to charge for something that costs them nothing to provide I do not understand. Heck, Wii and PS3 and even my phone can do netflix and none of those charge me a monthly fee to enable it.

Re:Not bad.

[h4rr4r]

I have netflix streaming and it has a pretty good selection. Easily better than amazon prime and hulu combined. My understanding was to use your netflix subscription you had to pay for Xbox live Gold. Which to me is a total ripoff. I guess if you already have live for some other reason it makes sense, but I am not going to pay money to listen to 12 year olds call each other bad words.

Re:Not bad.

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I've long said that Xbox Live! is the world's most expensive P2P network, but for console gaming it's the very best option. What Sony and Nintendo offer is a total joke.

Re:Halo 4?

[chemicaldave]

It's no longer developed by Bungie (although many employees moved to the new in-house developer, 343 Industries). And this surely isn't over yet, one thing the summary neglected to mention is that Microsoft announced a new trilogy. Expect Halo 5 and 6 as well.

Re:Halo 4?

[the linux geek]

The real question is who's left for the enemy - the Covenant became allies in Halo 3, and the Flood are dead. Hopefully they'll do something reasonably creative.

Re:I still consider myself a gamer

[Blakey Rat]

Do you guys just copy-and-paste this same old shit into every single Slashdot thread, or are people actually typing it over and over again under the delusion that 1) it's an original sentiment, or 2) other people care to read it?

Because if it's the latter, it's impressive how alike they all end up sounding.

This is just the Slashdot Games version of, "you darn kids, get off my lawn!"

They're making the same mistakes as the Wii

[harl]

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.

Getting old.

[yarnosh]

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.

Star Wars on Kinect

[eclectus]

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.

Re:Halo 4?

[newcastlejon]

Plus the Human government was dealing with colonial rebellions and pirate organizations at the beginning of the story. Plenty of potential bad guys there.

True, but Bungie first caught my eye for their stories of a lone player character pitted against/with intelligences far greater than their own. The villain decay started with Halo 2 and was apace in the third instalment; I think if they continue the franchise with human or covenant remnants than the grandeur will be lost. On the other hand, if they introduce another ostensibly invincible enemy we'll be faced with what happened to Stargate*. If that enemy happens to be the Forerunner we'd be left with an issue akin to comic book retconning: "actually, they weren't all killed off", despite that being the whole point of the race as far as the plot is concerned. For me, Halo was done after 3, where the arcs were tied up (for better or worse).

*OMG The Goa'uld can't be beaten, we're fucked! Oh, wait we beat them... OMG Replicators!... OMG Ori!... etc. For the record I do love SG1, but because of MacGuyver and the self-contained episodes like Zero Hour, rather than any long-running plot.