Additional Kinect Information

The most important thing to note is that the Kinect has not officially been given a price though the rumor is $150. As we all know Kinect needs to be bundled with a console and that the bundle needs to be reasonably priced. I do not see the bundle coming in at under $300 so Microsoft's ability to undercut Nintendo might be in vain. Speculation aside these are a few other things that we know about Natal Kinect.

There will be a new gesture based Kinect only menu also known as the Kinect Hub.

From here you can get to your music, your movies (which are also gesture controlled), and Video Kinect - a video chat function.

Video Kinect looks to have Bing integration where you can see the weather where you are located and where your friend is located. You can also watch movies together while being able to see each other.

The Kinect also tracks where you move so you are always in the viewfinder.

Video Kinect is coming to Live Messenger on the PC as well so who knows if you will be able to Kinect connect your Kinect (oh jeez) to the computer.

Also mentioned, but already known, is that Xbox Live will be coming to Window Phone 7.

Initial KINECT games and partnerships announced

We all very clearly remember Nintendogs and Wii Sports, don't we? How about Playstation's upcoming EyePet? Well - and brace yourselves for this one - one of the first games announced by Microsoft for the KINECT AI camera is Kinectimals.

Kinectimals lets you play with 20 different pets including lions, tigers and cheetahs. Should it more appropriately Kinectikitty? Anyway this is not a product for those of us reading this and should occupy a five-year-old's time for at least a few minutes that is until they play...

...Kinect Sports. Oh come on! We just want these kids to just upgrade from their Wii and we can't do them any more credit than this? Guess not.

We can at least give these kids, the free-to-play (if that model still exists), Joyride back, right? Yes we can. The game has made the leap forward to become entirely gesture based and will likely be a launch game for Kinect.

Licenses that are infinitely more exciting than any off this: priceless. I mean Disney and LucasArts have showed their, perhaps exclusive, support for Microsoft's full body moving camera.

I just cannot wait to force push enemies using MY HAND.

[VIA USA Today]

Project Natal is aptly named KINECT

So there it is; looking relatively similar to the Natal prototype pictures, Kinect for Xbox 360 has officially been unveiled. This came a few short hours after both USA Today and an advertisement on an Italian website leaked the new slim 360 and the Kinect branding of Project Natal.

I like the name but I think, like everything else, people will have a problem with it. It fits what the camera is supposed to do - kinect connect people.

[Photos and articles pulled from Futurestiq Joystiq]

Lionhead Studios Countdown

UPDATE: The countdown is at zero at 12.42am on Wednesday; August, 19, 2009 and on the left banner where there was previously just bullet holes, there is some blood spatter added to mix if you wait for a bit. Somehow I am disinclined to believe that this will be a Fable 3 announcement. I am beginning to believe that this is for a new IP.

A few days ago quotes from famous revolutionaries (Joan of Arc, Che Guevara) have been posted as the main splash page on Lionhead's website in the form of a countdown. As you can see to the right, there is one day left until the big announcement.

Speculation on this Joystiq's part include a Game of the Year edition of Fable 2... which would be a silly thing to have a countdown for or perhaps an early Fable 3 announcement (this is naturally what I am hoping for). Perhaps it could be the official announcement for the Milo Project which as you know from E3 involved the Project Natal camera (though this is probably not the case).

If you navigate to their site by way of the thumbs up or thumbs down buttons the left banner on the site is ridden with, what look like, bullet holes (does smoke curl from any other type of holes?). If anyone has any idea what this could be, you know where to post it. Fable 2 had guns, right? What other Lionhead projects had guns? Is this something entirely new?

E309: Project Natal thoughts

So the Xbox team announced their answer to the Wii - probably too late to matter - three years after it (the Wii) launched. The question for me is will it matter to me and other "hardcore gamers"?

I think it is possible for it to matter to me. It could make racing games fun (I am not willing to invest in a wheel). Maybe, like I said in an earlier post, it will be compatible with Joyride (though I still doubt that it would be as interesting as people find/will find Forza 3). Natal working with Joyride would be the natural progression of where my mind takes me.

It would make menu browsing fun but that would last for five minutes or so before it got annoying. It would be interesting to see it work with an FPS but somehow I do not think I will be playing Halo 3: ODST with Project Natal anytime soon. It is not really a question of whether it would work (because if it works as well as they are making it look like then it could do most things) but whether it would be fun. I do not think many people are going to want to labor/work out in order to play a multiplayer match of H3 or GOW2. I think that, in the end, it looks like a good piece of technology but I probably will not be able to justify the 100 or so dollars that it will probably cost.

Now about Milo, I do not find the boy creepy, like most do, but I am finding it difficult to fathom how "he" would not become boring to "hang out" with or how he would actually function like a game that I want to play.

Now the piece of technology itself, Project Natal (the camera), looks awesome and I would just want to have it in front of my television so people could tell me how awesome it looks. It would be fun to have people who do not play Xbox to ask what it was and then be able to show them. But that is just it, right now, it just feels like a novelty.

The Verdict: Unless I see something that completely sways me in the opposite direction it is probably not made for me.