E3: Day 1- So Many Casualties

As excepted, Microsoft spent the grand majority of their conference going over Nata-- whoops, I mean Kinect. Also as expected, all of the Kinect games seem like straight up shots at Nintendo with sport, racing and even yoga games. It's like 2006 all over again. Oh yeah, and there were tigers jumping rope, too.

I guess I can't really speak for everyone as I don't own an Xbox but this was pretty unimpressive. Mostly because it's stuff we've all soon before and everyone knows it. Kinect has some really incredible motion tracking but instead of applying to several practical uses they tacked on to mini games that caters to a market that's already owned by Nintendo. I don't see the people who love those games on the Wii shelling out much more money for a similar experience that doesn't even come bundled with the console. I feel like they just struck out with the demographic they're trying to reach. I had about 5 seconds of excitement where I felt I needed it before it passed and I realized it does nothing for me and my life can stay Xbox-less for the time being. Perhaps the coolest part about Kintek was when they used it to enhance features that were already a part of the Xbox. Like pausing and starting music, movies and more with vocal recognition and physical gestures. which like I said are really sharp on Kintek.

To go along with their new device, Microsft revealed the remodeled 360. It comes with built-in wifi, has 250 GB HDD and it's noticeably smaller. Now this I really considered getting since the reason I sold my xbox was because I bought the arcade to save money but then when I realized that I had to buy a $100 wfi connector to acess the Internet, well, I was pretty screwed. I just never used the thing. So built in wifi was something that immediately popped out at me. But it's being released at the same price for the current 360 at $300 and not a new low price. Sucks. It's really just not enough for me to make the purchase this late in the game. Especially when it clashes with my Apple product lifestyle. I guess I'll mooch off my friends.

As far as non-Kintek related games go, they also demoed Call of Duty: Black Ops, Gears of War 3 and Halo Reach. All the big "blockbuster" titles for their hardcore shooter crowd. Not really the sort of thing I'm into. Although, Gears of War has always impressed me stylistically. But wait-- they also showed gameplay from MGS: Rising! Raiden was cutting up his foes like nobodies business. It's seriously kick-ass. At one point he's chopping up a dude in slow-motion whilst mid-air. Then he cut up a watermelon. Classic Kojima humor. And they changed it from Tactial Espionage Action to Lighting Bolt Action. That's pretty funny.

So we still have EA and Ubisoft conferences left today. Then tomorrow we really get to the good stuff!

Update: There is going to be an Xbox/Kinect bundle and GameStop has priced it at $400.