Microsoft held their pre-E3 press conference in the morning on Monday June 14th, and they had quite a few things to share with the world, and the whole world was able to watch. The press conference was shown live on Spike TV, various streaming sites such as gametrailers and gamespot, and also in New York at Times Square. Was the show better than years past? Any megatons dropped? Anything new or unexpected? Keep reading for info straight from LA at Microsoft’s pre-E3 2010 press conference.
Call of Duty: Black Ops
The show started off with a fresh trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops and a live demo of said game. Everything looked smooth from the dark, cramped tunnels, to the lush, wide open jungles, and the exploding bridges were a nice touch. But let’s cut to the chase; we already knew about CoD: Black Ops. The big announcement to kick off the show was all upcoming DLC for all Call of Duty games for the next 3 years will land first on the Xbox 360. That means this year, 2011, and 2012, every DLC pack will be at least a timed exclusive for the Xbox 360. Fear not PS3 owners, the DLC should still come out on your favorite console as well. At least that’s what we understand, since the announcement didn’t state otherwise.
Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer
Metal Gear Solid Rising
Up next was the new title from Kojima Productions, Metal Gear Solid Rising. Yes, we finally got to see the cutting in action. To me, the title didn’t look as pretty as MGS4, but then again, watching a trailer for a work-in-progress title on the internet or live TV via some wierd camera angles probably didn’t do the title justice. One thing that did look awesome was the cutting; control what you cut, how you cut, and where you cut. At the end of the trailer, you could hear Colonel Campbell’s voice which was a nice touch, but Snake was MIA. No Snake! Que my sad face.
Metal Gear Solid Rising trailer
Gears of War 3
From this point on during the presser, all titles being shown were titles only available on the Xbox 360. For the first exclusive title, a few people from Epic came out to show off a live demo for Gears of War 3. The bit they showed off looked good with 4 player co-op, and it still had that same Gears of War feel to it. In other words, if your a fan of Gears of War, you’ll like what was shown, and if you aren’t, well, just keep on moving. If you’re at the show, Cliffy B wants to show you a new game mode for Gears 3 at the Epic booth. Look out for Gears of War 3 in 2011.
Halo: Reach
Shortly after the Gears of War 3 showcase, Bungie studios took the stage to provide the first glimpse of the campaign for Halo: Reach. Before showing off the campaign, Bungie just wanted to say thanks to the over 2.7 million people that downloaded and played the beta for Halo: Reach. The campaign live demo looked sweet, new, and familiar. There was the classic open world gameplay, the tight corridors, Elites that dropped from the skies in pods like ODST’s, and something going on in space. Armor abilities, Elites dropping in from the heavens, and outer space?! Bungie said it best; Halo: Reach is definitely the most ambitious Halo title to date. Halo: Reach falls on September 14th, 2010.
After Halo: Reach, there was a trailer for Fable 3 (the music really didn’t match the game in my opinion), something from Crytek called codename Kingdoms, and a whole lot of stuff for project natal.
Project Natal? Pardon me, Project Natal has a new name, Kinect for Xbox 360. I’m gonna miss the old name. Natal just flowed off the tongue, but Kinect? It’ll just take some getting used to I suppose. While this name change was announced last night at the Microsoft Cirque du Soleil event, everyone else got to hear and see the newness in action today.
Kinect for Xbox 360
Boy, oh boy did Kinect have a lot to show. In short, pretty much the rest of the show was dedicated to Kinect. As you may already know, Kinect aka Natal is a controller free experience. All that you need to play a game is a) the Kinect camera thingy, and b) a person. That’s it, nothing to hold onto. Yes, you will probably look weird flailing around, but hey, at least you can have a friend flailing around with you at the same time. And better still, you can even upload photos from the game directly to Facebook for everyone on your friends list to enjoy.
Wait, while the flailing might be fun, there’s some usefulness to Kinect, such as ways to stay connected with your friends and family. For example, there are voice commands and gesture commands ala Minority Report, video chatting with Kinect and Messenger Live users, activity/video sharing during video chatting and more. If you weren’t interested in Natal Kinect before, lets just say that there’s a lot of reasons to get you more interested.
Also announced during the Kinect showcase was the ESPN partnership for Xbox Live. While this was being shown, all I kept thinking was ‘how much’? Well friends, if you are a gold member of Xbox Live, you get to access the ESPN content for free. That’s not a half bad perk for being a gold member.
Kinect for Xbox 360 will launch this November 4th with 15 titles.
The New Xbox 360
And last but not least, Microsoft showed off the new Xbox 360 design, the Xbox 360 slim. Just like their competitors, the 360 has been shrunken down a bit, and a larger hard drive has been thrown in for good measure, along with wi-fi. YAY! NO MORE $100 WI-FI ADD-ON RIP OFFS! Sorry, I got a little carried away there, but for good reason. Oh, and everyone that was at the event got one of these brand new puppies as if they were on Oprah!
And one last thing. This new model is currently shipping out to retailers today, so your favorite big box store should have some by this week. The New Xbox 360 with the 250GB Hard Drive will retail for $300, and the Xbox 360 Original models will receive a price cut of $50.
