Microsoft Kinect: Games and Video Chat Revealed
Microsoft may have caused a fuss when it announced Natal at E3 2009 but Natal is already making a huge splash at E3 2010.
Microsoft's Project Natal has been around since E3 of last year. There's been several demonstrations and events featuring Natal since then so we kind of feel like Natal is old news at this stage. However, now that E3 has rolled around again, we're getting all worked up over the motion sensing peripheral.
We'd heard through the grapevine that Microsoft planned to ditch the name Natal and last night, the company did just that. At a huge party in downtown LA, the Redmond, Washington-based company revealed Kinect, aka Project Natal to the world.
The company didn't give a lot of details about the project, preferring instead to focus on the aesthetics with an impressive Cirque du Soleil performance. Microsoft had banned cameras and phones from the event but soon after released official shots of the device.
In a simultaneously posted report, USA Today released details of some of the titles we can expect to see at launch. These include:
•Kinectimals lets you train and play with 20 different virtual cats, including a lion, cheetah and tiger.
•Joyride, a racing game, lets players use their hands to hold an imaginary steering wheel — pull your hands toward you and push back out for an acceleration boost — and their bodies to execute jumps and tricks.
•Kinect Sports has six activities including boxing, bowling, beach volleyball, track and field, soccer and table tennis. To serve a volleyball, you mimic the real motion; in soccer, you can kick the ball or do a header.
•Kinect Adventures includes a river-raft time trial and obstacle course, playable by up to four players. On the raft, playing as a duo, you and a partner must lean one way or another to steer. Jumping helps the raft reach special areas for extra points.
•Dance Central, in development by MTV Games, incorporates immersive, full-body dancing without the need for a controller.
•Star Wars characters and iconic Disney favorites will be featured in separate new games being developed at Microsoft in conjunction with LucasArts and Disney.
Engadget reports that there'll also be a video chat application and that for the most part, a lot of the games seem 'one player at a time,' even the multiplayer games like volleyball. Stay tuned for some Kinetic videos!
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Seems like an underwhelming first look. Hope it gets better!
Sounds like awesome, albeit $150 price tag.
Weird name though (Kinect). Hope there is no rise in subscription fee ($30-45 a year is good).
Kinectimals: what, only cats - how about horses and other animals we'd never hoped to be pets (dragons? balrog? lol)
Joyride: I don't know, gets tiring after awhile
Kinect Sports: make sure you don't kick your shoes off and break the TV/kinect
Kinect Adventures: I'd expect more than river-raft... maybe an RPG in a 3D-looking (not real 3D, I hate glasses) dungeons/jungle etc.
Dance Central: Interesting
Wish list:
Oblivion V
Battlefield Bad Company 3 (or similarly FPS/TPS games)
Left 4 Dead 3
Prince of Persia (or Assassin's Creed 3)
Wow cool ... Wii without the controllers. And look everyone ... free lag time too!
Wow cool ... Wii without the controllers. And look everyone ... free lag time too!
I sincerely hope that it's differentiated from the Wii. And I'm pretty sure that some later reports have stated that they solved the lag issue.
I could imagine people playing that rafting game and knocking their heads together on the couch....
I could imagine people playing that rafting game and knocking their heads together on the couch....
I don't think Kinect is a bad name, Project Natal was never that great in my opinion, but Kinectimals makes me laugh.
Will be interesting to see where this heads.
I could imagine people playing that rafting game and knocking their heads together on the couch....
oh that reminds me of when my girlfriend first played Wii. She swung back with the controller and broke my nose. I have to wonder how many injuries tthat system has caused.
Spoiler... The big news at E3 around is around Natal... I mean Kinect 3d. Thats right 3d play using Kinect. Think about it actually hitting virtual balls that are presnted in 3d space for example.
That's the big draw for the furry crowd.
Now, with voice chat? Can you say an all new experience for chatroulette.com??!! Now race your friends, and see who comes in second.
So they had a long and painful brainstorming and came up with Kinect? I liked Natal better.
So the camera can differentiate the movements of 2 or more people at once... Um... I can imagine a couple of movements involving 2 people that SOMEONE out there is gonna try... The question is how long it will take before Vivid wants to release a "game" on the XBOX. LMAO
$150?! Seriously? That's as much as an arcade Xbox....
cool name. I didn't like the name Natal. good riddance and good job microsoft
I would think they would make the device match the rest of the system.
I'm sold.
How do you for from "Natal" to Kinect?...
seems like quite a bit of post-natal depression about the upcoming bit of kit
Kinect has got to be the dumbest name choice ever. Natal sounded cool, and intriguing. Natal was a really good name. But Kinect, bah.
Kinetic sounds better than Kinect
Kinectard...well i like Natal more.
How do you for from "Natal" to Kinect?...
It was a project name. How do you go from Cypress to Radeon 58xx, or from Revolution to Wii? You sir, are a nerd in name only.
Seems like an underwhelming first look. Hope it gets better!
True, but everyone said the same thing about the Wii too. Of course, the critics were partly right, as the Wiimotes aren't good for everything. Kinect, just like the Wiimotes, won't be every thing to every person.
Furthermore, it won't work for every game. I think the developers understand this better now, and you'll probably see most hardcore 360 games still using the controller as the primary input, maybe with some optional Kinect motion/voice input.
In other words, I don't all 360 developers forcing you to use motion controls for *everything* (even crap that doesn't make sense), like many Wii titles do.
So the camera can differentiate the movements of 2 or more people at once... Um... I can imagine a couple of movements involving 2 people that SOMEONE out there is gonna try... The question is how long it will take before Vivid wants to release a "game" on the XBOX. LMAO
Instead of DDR, FFR?
I never wanted to own an XBOX, but now I might get one....this looks pretty awesome (I'd never thought I would say that about a console, let alone one from microsoft)
Why would they change the name to make it sound worse? It sounded cooler as natal, and it didn't look like somebody with downs did the spellcheck.