E3 2010 - Xbox 360 media briefing

There's loads and loads of news coming out of E3 today and it's all abut Microsofts Xbox 360 and Kinect. There's far too much from me to cover all of it but I'm gonna run over as much as possible.

News seems to be in two main area's the Xbox 360 media briefing and news on Kinect (Aka project Natal) so i'll attack it in these area's:

Xbox 360 Briefing

• Briefing Kicked off with Showing of a level on Call Of Duty - Black Opps - Look like a great game but not a Modern Warfare 2 beater.
• Introduced Kinect for Xbox 360
• Metal Gear Solid Rising - Preview video. Looked like a lot of fun. Focus on using a sword as a main weapon with great control over its use.
• Gears of War 3 - We saw a lengthy four player co-op of a mission. Didn't really see anything ground breaking but still looks like another fantastic game.
• Fable 3 - Video footage. I honestly have no interest in this one, I tuned out during this.
• Halo Reach -  1st ever footage shown of campaign mode. Oh man I'm so excited for this! Loved the footage of what I saw, I also played the beta and was very impressed.
• Demmo on Kinect for 360. Signing in by waving, showed finding a video to watch using voice and gestures. Used gestures to fast forward and voice to play and pause. Moved on to how to play music again using voice and gestures. 
• Xbox live will be on windows phone 7
• Demmo'd using Kinect to video chat with other console users and Windows Live Messenger users. Can watched movies together while using video chat as well sports and news. Also show how Kinect tracks you as you move around the room. 
• ESPN - Free with Xbox live Gold membership. Think this is USA only. Will cover College Basketball and Football (American Football to the UK), Major league baseball and NBA basketball. 
• 6 Kinect only Games 
• Kinect Star Wars game coming to Xbox announced. Not too much show game still in development 
• Forza Motorsort - Live demmo of using Kinect to drive the car, look around the interior, walk up to and around the car as if you were stood on the actual track. Even to the point where you can kneel down look at the brake and open the hood to see the engine.
• New Xbox 360 console - Smaller, quieter, built in wif-fi and 250GB HD! Released this week in USA, 14th July in Europe. Here's engadget's close up look of it. Anyone in the audience got one free!

 Keep checking the Xbox dashboard and Xbox.com for video of the entire briefing.

Kinect

Here's are some facts i've gleamed so far

• Voice recognition and gesture control
• Kinect is Compatible with current Xbox 360's (after an update over live) via USB.
• Camera Tracks your face in Video Chat
• Releases 4th November world wide
• Recognizes face and sign you into your account automatically.
• Common feature in Kinect games is having your photo taken at key points in the game then shown at the end. These can then be posted on social networks such as Facebook.
• On multiplayer games Kinect sees the 2nd player set in and it automatically put the new player into the game.
• Can be played in low light conditions.
• Camera recognizes 48 different point on your body
• It can ignore other objects in the frame such a pillow couches coffee tables.

From what i've seen of Kinect I don't think it will be a replacement for an actual game controller. Hardcore gamers will stick with the traditional way of playing your FPS's especially. I feel this is defiantly aimed at mum's who will be buying this for there kids who will then grow up being 'branded' to microsoft, talk about play the long game. Mum's will jump at this just like they did with the Wii safe in the knowledge that their kids is getting at least some exercise. With the Wii you could 'cheat' and just swing your wrist to play a game but with this you have to use your whole body to play, not sure if that a good or bad thing ;-)

Will I be getting Kinect? Erm it's not top of my gadget want list but it's on there. I'm more interested in how I can use it for video chat and to control my dashboard to play music and watch films but i'm sure me and Laura will enjoy the activity games also we've been putting of buying a Wii for a while now I have a better option.

Hope you find this helpful. Any comments welcome.

G