E3 2010: Microsoft Press Conference

The Microsoft Press Conference has just wrapped up today, and the future of gaming is on us. Whether it will be bright, or dreary, is yet to be seen, but I will say I was impressed by a few things. Here is an overview of what we saw;

MS opened up with Hideo Kojima presenting Metal Gear Solid: Rising. It was a cheesy campaign with their new slogan “What will you cut?” since the new game features sword play. I thought to myself “What will I cut? My wrists if I have to keep watching this bad marketing trailer.” Aside from that, it does indeed have pretty graphics. They have also made it so you can destroy building structures and cars which is neat. Kojima HEAVILY hinted that it will be for the Kinect, whether it will be required to play the game is unknown.

After that we had some coverage on the Kinect. I think the biggest hit game was Kinectimals. Personally I am a little embarrassed to admit I kind of want it. There are 8 different animals right now. You can train, explore, play, and talk with them. The video for it was very cute even if it was played up.

Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Luminies, Rez, E3, N3, Space Channel 5) revealed his newest creation called Child of Eden which is probably the best game I’ve seen for Kinect yet, and the best use of this technology. For those of you who have played Rez, you will notice is looks like a newer version of it. The music is very good and this may be the game that pushes me to get a Kinect. I’m a sucker for rhythm games.

Halo Reach was presented as we all knew it would be. It will be released September 24th in North America. It takes place in 2552, which is before the Halo 1 game. It is based more around the graphic novel this time around. The recent online beta that took place in May, drew 2.7 million players.

Gears of War 3 looks to be promising. They ran a 3 player co-op campaign session during their E3 presentation. It is still as over the top as ever, and while Gears hasn’t been on my top favorites list I do enjoy the cut scenes. At the least we can say, they did not let their fans down.

They had a Forza Motorsport demo with use of Kinect shown. Which makes me wonder what all those people who bought the force feedback wheel will do. I think I’d rather drive with a wheel than my body anyway. P.S. don’t use the wheel to train yourself to drive a real car, believe me, we tried already… it didn’t work.

I thought this was really cool. Here is the demo video for how Kinect works as an interface with videos and the dashboard. It also recognizes voice commands, which is a godsend for me since I am always losing the remote. Like… really, it’s ridiculous. A salute to Ron for doing this presentation, he is working hard to make sure the Kinect is going to be awesome. There is like, 50x more work that goes on behind the scenes to do presentations like this than the few mins we get to see.

That wraps up the highlights. Be sure to check our Twitter feed for live updates. Our team is out there on the showroom floor for the duration of the convention so if you have questions or requests be sure to get them out there!