Microsoft E3 Conference - Live Blog

Xbox 360

Microsoft's E3 Conference is just about to start, we'll keep you up to date as it goes on:

2:55am - There's about five minutes to go, not long to wait.

3:03am - Looks like the conference has been delayed for half an hour...

3:25am - It's finally starting...

3:32am - We've got a trailer of Call of Duty: Black Ops, nothing too exciting. To be released on the 11th of September this year.

3:33am - The head of Treyarch has come on stage, he's demoing Black Ops.

3:36am - We're seeing a fair bit of gameplay, the capture of a Hind helicopter.

They're flying the chopper now, launching missiles at enemy bases, great explosions. Nice water effects with the spray of the machine gun.

3:40am - Here comes Mark, senior VP of Microsoft. They're making a deal with Activision, they'll be releasing the DLC for games on Xbox 360 first. Microsoft will be "transforming how we play games".

3:45am - Hideo Kojima is coming on stage! He's going to show us something. He mentions MGS:Rising. He has the first footage of the game. Rising is a sword action game "unlike anything we seen before". A trailer plays, Raiden takes out a cyborg soldier and absorbs some electricity, then shows off some sweet sword skills. The game has a focus on being able to cut pretty much anything, Raiden slices a car into multiples pieces, and even shows off some precision by slicing up a watermelon.

3:49 - Cliffy comes on stage to show off Gears of War 3. We'll be seeing the first female player characters. They're showing off a mission with co-op, the monsters are as crazy as ever. Players can share picked up guns with each other,the graphics seem a little better than Gears 2. There's a large scale laser weapon which fried some baddies. The game will be out April 2011.

3:54am - Peter Molyneux is coming on to show Fable 3. A trailer plays, looks like more of the same, with a slightly more epic feel to it this time.

3:56am - Microsoft has a new partner, a video plays, we see a battlefield. We see the Crytek logo. The game is called Codename Kingdoms.

3:58am - The lead of Bungie has come on stage. The Halo Reach beta was the biggest one yet. It's their most ambitious title so far. The game is shipping in September, now a trailer plays. We see gameplay of a battle on a barren world, alien troops are coming in by dropping pods. A heat-seeking rocket launcher is shown off. We see the player character get into a rocket and launch into space, and the new addition of spaceship combat.

4:05am - We have a speech about Xbox Live. Kinetic is making games simpler to enjoy. It responds to gestures and voice commands. Ron, an engineer comes on stage. He waves and the Xbox logs him in. We see a new Xbox menu which works with the Kinect system. You can say which option you want and it will be selected. Then you can use your hands to navigate. He goes into Zune movies and starts a movie, then skips through it by gesturing. He says "Xbox, pause" and the movie pauses. He says "Xbox, play" and the movie starts again. Then he says "Xbox, play music" and a playlist starts up. We'll also see this functionality with Facebook and more.

We'll be seeing Xbox Live on phones. Kinect alows you to connect to people. You can use it to video chat, and talk without a headset. It will also work with Windows Live Messenger. We see a demonstration of a video call, it works well. Buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you to watch movie trailers together. The Kinect can also track you movements as you go, as the people move around the view pans to keep them in the centre of the frame. Apparently it tracks your skeleton.

4:17am - ESPN has signed a contract with Microsoft to offer on demand sports content to the Xbox 360. Two guys from ESPN come on stage. It's a community channel which seems to offer everything, including Baseball and NBA. We're seeing a replay of a college football game. They say "Xbox, join USC" and it selects that they're rooting for that team. He also says "Xbox, replay" and the last bit plays again. You can take a look at scores from other games while still watching the one you want. The service will be available for free to all Xbox Live Gold subscribers.   

4:23am - We're now being shown the first 6 Kinect games. Kinectimals is up first, we see a little girl interacting with a tiger named Skittles. It reacts to her movements, copying her jumps and spins. It comes when she calls it, and can play with toys which she chooses. There's 40 different animals on offer.

Now we have a sports game, Kinect Sports. It looks a bit like Wii Sports. We see a crowd reacting to some voice cues. Now we have a sprinting event. Two people run on the spot and their avatars run the race, jumping over hurdles. Next we see a montage of sports that will be available, such as Beach Volleyball.

Now we have Kinect Joy Ride, a racing game. A lady is driving by twisting and turning her body, as well as calling out "boost" to get a speed increase.

Next is Kinect Adventures. They play a game where you have to jump and move to collect orbs as you travel on a platform. It features automatic multiplayer where the Kinect will pick up anyone who enters the view of the camera. Now we have a river rafting game where players have to shift their bodies to make the raft move and collect orbs. The camera also takes pictures as you play so you can show off your poses. The game will have 20 different challenges.

4:40am - We now have Your Shape Evolved from Ubisoft. The game tracks your whole body in realtime. Menus will follow your movements. Fitness trainer Micheal George comes on to talk about it. You can choose what kind of training you want from each section. There are both high and low intensity activities. There's even some combat training, punching and kicking virtual blocks. The game keeps track of how many calories you're burning in the corner of the screen. There's also some gentle zen classes which serve as cooldown exercises. It seems similar to Wii Fit, but a little better.

4:49am - Now from Harmonix we have one of their lead designers. We're seeing Dance Central, a dancing game where you follow an on-screen dancer in realtime, with the moves coming up as you go. There are over 90 routines in the game, some of which are taken from the actual music videos of the songs that are playing. For less confident dancers, there's a mode which teaches you routines step by step. Kinect will be launching this year, starting with America on November 4th. There will be more than 15 launch titles. LucasArts will be making a Kinect game. It's a Star Wars game, with realtime lightsaber action. We'll be seeing it sometime next year. It's not Force Unleashed 2, it's an original title.

5am -  The Xbox 360 has gotten a redesign. 250GB HDD, built-in Wi-fi, slimmer and quieter. The console will be available to buy in America this week for the same price that the Elite has been going for. The Elite and Arcade models will be discounted. It has a glossy black finish like the original PS3 console. That's it, the conference is over.

Latest Reader Comments:

Posted by insanopointless 16/06/2010 6:01pm

Yeah I have definitely got the feeling that we are not the demographic at all.

Move is somewhat more 'hardcore' but I still think most of the games for it look dodge. That Fight Club Lights Out or whatever is probably the worst thing I have ever seen.

Socom could be cool buttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt yeah.

Posted by admeister 16/06/2010 5:33pm

So far, yeah, the menu is the coolest thing about kinect.

Pretty much, that part actually looks good. All the games are just casual crap though, Microsoft aren't appealing to the hardcore gamers enough.

Posted by insanopointless 16/06/2010 5:11pm

User: "Xbox, Play Movie"
Xbox: "Connecting to Facebook"
User: "No - Play Movie!"
Xbox: "Formatting Hard Drive"
User: "PLAY MOVIE!!!"
Xbox: "Self Destruct Sequence, Initiated"

Hah that made me lol.

Very clever, that they make you say Xbox everytime you wanna use voice command, it's like you're advertising to yourself.

So far, yeah, the menu is the coolest thing about kinect.

Posted by Master Chief 16/06/2010 2:10pm

Xbox, Beer me

Posted by G-Train 16/06/2010 12:36pm

User: "Xbox, Play Movie"
Xbox: "Connecting to Facebook"
User: "No - Play Movie!"
Xbox: "Formatting Hard Drive"
User: "PLAY MOVIE!!!"
Xbox: "Self Destruct Sequence, Initiated"

Posted by Master Chief 15/06/2010 7:47pm

Your Shape has been out on Wii for a while but it is nothing compared to the 1:1 movement of Kinect.

Posted by insanopointless 15/06/2010 7:20pm

Interesting, I thought Your Shape or whatever looked cool but the Dance one was the only other one that caught my interest. I would have called it on par at least. Still, nothing great, wanna see Fable using it.

Posted by Master Chief 15/06/2010 6:34am

G4TV are so angry about getting their hosting rights for the press conference taken away from them that they made a comment saying "If you missed the show, just fire up your DVR and watch Nintendo's 2008 press conference".. mildly amusing ;P

Posted by Master Chief 15/06/2010 6:00am

Okay so half of what they showed on Kinect was crap, but I think Your Shape has potential and looks a hell of a lot more accurate than Wii Fit and the dozens of other fitness games on that other console. Joy Ride looked shit, Kinectimals looked even worse, and I wouldn't touch that dance game.

It showed quite a few cover arts for games coming out that will be using Kinect.. EA Active 2, a Madagascar game.. would love to get a list of those games that were shown at the end of the demo.

The Forza interactivity looked sweet as long as it still has the regular gaming. Games like that make me less hesitant to buy Kinect.

Was hoping for some AC Brotherhood.. maybe they're saving that for the Sony conference, or Ubisoft's own one.