Microsoft will likely unveil new games for its Kinect motion controller during its E3 press conference Monday, and we’ll also go deeper with Gears of War 3, the company’s big shooter scheduled for release later this year.
What else will the maker of Xbox 360 show the world?
Probably Halo 4, Kinect Star Wars, Dance Central 2 and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, if an early morning update on the Xbox.com website is to be believed. Those game titles appeared on the site briefly Monday in an apparent publishing error, according to Kotaku.com.
We’ll know for sure at 9:30 a.m. Pacific, when Microsoft’s E3 presser begins. Check back here for Wired.com’s live coverage.
9:27 — We are here! The briefing is scheduled to start in just a few minutes. There’s a “content warning” on the big screens here at the Galen Center; we are warned that the videos will about to see contain images of intense violence. Awesome.
9:30 — The music has changed. That means it is starting, I think. “Everything is so green,” Jason says sitting next to me. Jason has never been to an E3 before apparently. He missed the Cirque du Soleil thing where we were all in light-up ponchos.
9:31 — Things kick off with a video of Modern Warfare 3. Oh no, it’s actually a live demo. Somebody is on stage playing it. AHAHAHAH the controller got unsynced and it paused. Don’t laugh, it’s happened to you. Just not in the first two seconds of a Microsoft press conference. Unless you’re Peter Moore.
9:33 — The army men are swimming through water. Then they reach a checkpoint. “Checkpoint reached,” it says.
9:34 — They are swimming after a submarine. They plant something on it. They leave! They see the ruined Manhattan skyline. They’ve been in the Hudson River or something all this time. Gross. That’s never gonna wash off.
9:36 — Now the submarine is above the water and they are infiltrating it, shooting the other men. Pow pow pow! go their guns. The demo skips ahead to a new section, and water is filling the submarine. They find more men! They shoot them, too.
9:37 — The army men jump in a big inflatable pool toy raft and go zipping down the river, shooting with wild abandon. Navy ships and things are all over the place. Everything is either on fire now or was in the recent past. They steer the pool toy into a helicopter and it takes off. Majestic war music plays. The end!
9:41 — Reps of Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer intro the game, and then Xbox’s Don Mattrick takes the stage to welcome us. On behalf of Microsoft, he’s like to thank the fans for making last year the biggest year in Xbox history.
9:43 — Crystal Dynamics takes the stage to show us a demo of Tomb Raider.
9:45 — This is the same demo that has been described in Game Informer, Official PlayStation Magazine, etc. Wired.com will have our impressions of the Tomb Raider demo during E3 week. For now, the audience is watching as a young Lara Croft slowly moves her way through a scary-ass cavern, trying not to die.
9:50 — The Tomb Raider demo comes to a close with Lara making a daring escape out of the tunnels of hell. She sees a sweet-ass pirate ship on the horizon as the demo ends.
9:51 — Tomb Raider will be released in fall 2012, so don’t hold your breath. Now, EA Sports president Peter Moore takes the stage to show us four EA Sports games that will feature Kinect support in 2012. People applaud. They must not be live-blogging this. Madden, Tiger Woods, Fifa will all have Kinect support.
9:52 — Moore turns it over to BioWare’s Ray Muzyka, who will talk about Mass Effect, and apparently how it will be integrated with Kinect? That seems to be the implication. Yes: It will support Kinect for voice recognition, he says. You’ll be able to converse with characters in the game just by using your voice. “It’s unlike anything else out there,” he says. Let’s find out…
9:53 — Wow. Apparently instead of selecting dialogue options, you actually just say the line that’s on screen, and that’ll select the dialogue option. You can also use voice control to tell your combat buddies what to do in battle.
9:55 — We’ll see even more at the EA press briefing later today, he says. And now it’s time to look at Ubisoft’s shooter, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
9:57 — You know, I would totally love to play a military game that actually was set to opera singers, instead of them just using them for their slow-motion trailers. Yves Guillemot of Ubi is on stage talking about how Ghost Recon will use Kinect.
9:58 — You can use Kinect to assemble and disassemble your weapons, adding different parts in a futuristic motion and voice interface to add parts. You can use the voice commands “Optimize” and “Randomize” to automatically create the perfect gun for any situation, then test the guns out by holding your arms like you were holding the gun.
10:01 — All future Tom Clancy games will use Kinect, Guillemot says. Xbox Live’s Mark Whitten is now on stage to talk about the online service and what new features will be added to it.
10:02 — Unveiling a brand new Kinect-enabled Xbox 360 dashboard. It’s very elegant, lowercase text on a white background. Using voice, you can navigate through all of your entertainment, from movies to music to games. This year, says Whitten, Microsoft will grow its entertainment catalog from hundreds of thousands of pieces of info to millions. YouTube is coming to Xbox Live, for example.
10:04 — Bing is coming to Xbox with voice control. It will search Xbox, Hulu, and other content providers to find the entertainment you’re looking for. “Xbox Bing Lego,” she says. A menu is instantly pulled up with every bit of Lego content on Xbox all pop up. Games, movies, etc. “Xbox Bing X-Men,” she says, and every X-Men game and movie is found. “You say it, Xbox finds it,” Whitten says.
10:06 — LIve television is coming to Xbox 360, he says. They’re partnering with TV providers around the world for it. Your Xbox will become a DVR. Launching in fall 2011.
10:07 — Interesting how they’re pushing voice control versus gesturing. They’re not showing anyone using gesture controls to play TV and movies, just voice.
10:08 — The president of UFC is introducing UFC content on Xbox Live.
10:09 — Phil Spencer of “Microsoft Studios” comes out. Maybe I’m behind the curve but is the division not called “Microsoft Game Studios” anymore? Hopefully he is here to show us some actually unannounced videogames? Every single game, demo, experience they will show us right now is only on Xbox 360. He’s starting with Gears of War 3.
10:12 — Cliff Bleszinski takes the stage to play Gears of War 3 with his friend Ice-T. They start playing a new section of the campaign cooperatively, although we only see Clifford’s screen on the big screen behind them.
10:15 — The men shoot a giant monster in the eyeballs. It looks pretty painful for the monster. If I were to play this game I would want Ice-T as my partner, that is for sure.
10:17 — Gears demo is over. Ice-T says he will reunite his rock band “Body Count” to do an original song for the game’s Horde mode.
10:18 — Oh, it’s time for this Roman action game they teased last year. Let’s see how this is.
10:19 — Oh, gosh darn it. It’s Crytek’s Roman action game, alright, but apparently it’s a Kinect game. I don’t know how to feel about that. Apparently it’s called Ryse.
10:20 — Halo, the remastered edition for Xbox 360. Pretty new graphics, combined with “enhanced, updated” multiplayer maps. A “fully remastered campaign,” whatever that means. “Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary.” November 15, 2011.
10:21 — Time to talk about Forza Motorsport 4, Microsoft’s “vision for the future of racing.” Apparently it will have Kinect voice, but also head tracking, so you can turn your head to look around as you drive in first-person. Pretty neat.
10:24 — Here’s Peter Molyneux to talk about Lionhead’s Kinect game. No, not Milo & Kate, the one you want! Fable: The Journey.
10:25 — We begin the demo by riding a horse carriage in first-person down a trail. We have to destroy creatures by firing magic at them with hand gestures. “Looks like it’s on rails,” observes Jason. The guy doing the demo does some crazy stuff with his hands to build up a giant magic spell. So you basically do the Hand Jive to cast magic. Coming in 2012.
10:28 — Wow. Minecraft is coming to Xbox 360 and Kinect this winter.
10:29 — Kinect Disneyland Adventures. They’re recreating the entire Disney park as a Kinect game. You can go to all the attractions, hang out with Disney characters and ride the rides. Two kids are on stage playing “Peter Pan’s Flight.” one kid slams into the wall and totally eats it. It is funny to me. These kids are doing a great job pretending to play this video.
10:32 — And now it’s time for another game that was unveiled here at the Galen Center during the Cirque du Soleil thing: Kinect Star Wars. The video shows flying creatures, hitting things with lightsabers, all the stuff you’d imagine. The lights come up for a live demo. “Lightsaber ON!” says the guy on stage, exactly how a Star Wars character would say it if the movies were terrible.
10:36 — Yes, so this is pretty much the first game everybody thought of back when they saw the Wii in 2005. Microsoft got done what Nintendo didn’t.
10:37 — Tim Schafer has arrived to show us Once Upon a Monster, Double Fine’s Sesame Street game for Kinect.
What else will the maker of Xbox 360 show the world?
Probably Halo 4, Kinect Star Wars, Dance Central 2 and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, if an early morning update on the Xbox.com website is to be believed. Those game titles appeared on the site briefly Monday in an apparent publishing error, according to Kotaku.com.
We’ll know for sure at 9:30 a.m. Pacific, when Microsoft’s E3 presser begins. Check back here for Wired.com’s live coverage.
9:27 — We are here! The briefing is scheduled to start in just a few minutes. There’s a “content warning” on the big screens here at the Galen Center; we are warned that the videos will about to see contain images of intense violence. Awesome.
9:30 — The music has changed. That means it is starting, I think. “Everything is so green,” Jason says sitting next to me. Jason has never been to an E3 before apparently. He missed the Cirque du Soleil thing where we were all in light-up ponchos.
9:31 — Things kick off with a video of Modern Warfare 3. Oh no, it’s actually a live demo. Somebody is on stage playing it. AHAHAHAH the controller got unsynced and it paused. Don’t laugh, it’s happened to you. Just not in the first two seconds of a Microsoft press conference. Unless you’re Peter Moore.
9:33 — The army men are swimming through water. Then they reach a checkpoint. “Checkpoint reached,” it says.
9:34 — They are swimming after a submarine. They plant something on it. They leave! They see the ruined Manhattan skyline. They’ve been in the Hudson River or something all this time. Gross. That’s never gonna wash off.
9:36 — Now the submarine is above the water and they are infiltrating it, shooting the other men. Pow pow pow! go their guns. The demo skips ahead to a new section, and water is filling the submarine. They find more men! They shoot them, too.
9:37 — The army men jump in a big inflatable pool toy raft and go zipping down the river, shooting with wild abandon. Navy ships and things are all over the place. Everything is either on fire now or was in the recent past. They steer the pool toy into a helicopter and it takes off. Majestic war music plays. The end!
9:41 — Reps of Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer intro the game, and then Xbox’s Don Mattrick takes the stage to welcome us. On behalf of Microsoft, he’s like to thank the fans for making last year the biggest year in Xbox history.
9:43 — Crystal Dynamics takes the stage to show us a demo of Tomb Raider.
9:45 — This is the same demo that has been described in Game Informer, Official PlayStation Magazine, etc. Wired.com will have our impressions of the Tomb Raider demo during E3 week. For now, the audience is watching as a young Lara Croft slowly moves her way through a scary-ass cavern, trying not to die.
9:50 — The Tomb Raider demo comes to a close with Lara making a daring escape out of the tunnels of hell. She sees a sweet-ass pirate ship on the horizon as the demo ends.
9:51 — Tomb Raider will be released in fall 2012, so don’t hold your breath. Now, EA Sports president Peter Moore takes the stage to show us four EA Sports games that will feature Kinect support in 2012. People applaud. They must not be live-blogging this. Madden, Tiger Woods, Fifa will all have Kinect support.
9:52 — Moore turns it over to BioWare’s Ray Muzyka, who will talk about Mass Effect, and apparently how it will be integrated with Kinect? That seems to be the implication. Yes: It will support Kinect for voice recognition, he says. You’ll be able to converse with characters in the game just by using your voice. “It’s unlike anything else out there,” he says. Let’s find out…
9:53 — Wow. Apparently instead of selecting dialogue options, you actually just say the line that’s on screen, and that’ll select the dialogue option. You can also use voice control to tell your combat buddies what to do in battle.
9:55 — We’ll see even more at the EA press briefing later today, he says. And now it’s time to look at Ubisoft’s shooter, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
9:57 — You know, I would totally love to play a military game that actually was set to opera singers, instead of them just using them for their slow-motion trailers. Yves Guillemot of Ubi is on stage talking about how Ghost Recon will use Kinect.
9:58 — You can use Kinect to assemble and disassemble your weapons, adding different parts in a futuristic motion and voice interface to add parts. You can use the voice commands “Optimize” and “Randomize” to automatically create the perfect gun for any situation, then test the guns out by holding your arms like you were holding the gun.
10:01 — All future Tom Clancy games will use Kinect, Guillemot says. Xbox Live’s Mark Whitten is now on stage to talk about the online service and what new features will be added to it.
10:02 — Unveiling a brand new Kinect-enabled Xbox 360 dashboard. It’s very elegant, lowercase text on a white background. Using voice, you can navigate through all of your entertainment, from movies to music to games. This year, says Whitten, Microsoft will grow its entertainment catalog from hundreds of thousands of pieces of info to millions. YouTube is coming to Xbox Live, for example.
10:04 — Bing is coming to Xbox with voice control. It will search Xbox, Hulu, and other content providers to find the entertainment you’re looking for. “Xbox Bing Lego,” she says. A menu is instantly pulled up with every bit of Lego content on Xbox all pop up. Games, movies, etc. “Xbox Bing X-Men,” she says, and every X-Men game and movie is found. “You say it, Xbox finds it,” Whitten says.
10:06 — LIve television is coming to Xbox 360, he says. They’re partnering with TV providers around the world for it. Your Xbox will become a DVR. Launching in fall 2011.
10:08 — The president of UFC is introducing UFC content on Xbox Live.
10:09 — Phil Spencer of “Microsoft Studios” comes out. Maybe I’m behind the curve but is the division not called “Microsoft Game Studios” anymore? Hopefully he is here to show us some actually unannounced videogames? Every single game, demo, experience they will show us right now is only on Xbox 360. He’s starting with Gears of War 3.
10:12 — Cliff Bleszinski takes the stage to play Gears of War 3 with his friend Ice-T. They start playing a new section of the campaign cooperatively, although we only see Clifford’s screen on the big screen behind them.
10:15 — The men shoot a giant monster in the eyeballs. It looks pretty painful for the monster. If I were to play this game I would want Ice-T as my partner, that is for sure.
10:17 — Gears demo is over. Ice-T says he will reunite his rock band “Body Count” to do an original song for the game’s Horde mode.
10:18 — Oh, it’s time for this Roman action game they teased last year. Let’s see how this is.
10:19 — Oh, gosh darn it. It’s Crytek’s Roman action game, alright, but apparently it’s a Kinect game. I don’t know how to feel about that. Apparently it’s called Ryse.
10:20 — Halo, the remastered edition for Xbox 360. Pretty new graphics, combined with “enhanced, updated” multiplayer maps. A “fully remastered campaign,” whatever that means. “Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary.” November 15, 2011.
10:21 — Time to talk about Forza Motorsport 4, Microsoft’s “vision for the future of racing.” Apparently it will have Kinect voice, but also head tracking, so you can turn your head to look around as you drive in first-person. Pretty neat.
10:24 — Here’s Peter Molyneux to talk about Lionhead’s Kinect game. No, not Milo & Kate, the one you want! Fable: The Journey.
10:25 — We begin the demo by riding a horse carriage in first-person down a trail. We have to destroy creatures by firing magic at them with hand gestures. “Looks like it’s on rails,” observes Jason. The guy doing the demo does some crazy stuff with his hands to build up a giant magic spell. So you basically do the Hand Jive to cast magic. Coming in 2012.
10:28 — Wow. Minecraft is coming to Xbox 360 and Kinect this winter.
10:29 — Kinect Disneyland Adventures. They’re recreating the entire Disney park as a Kinect game. You can go to all the attractions, hang out with Disney characters and ride the rides. Two kids are on stage playing “Peter Pan’s Flight.” one kid slams into the wall and totally eats it. It is funny to me. These kids are doing a great job pretending to play this video.
10:32 — And now it’s time for another game that was unveiled here at the Galen Center during the Cirque du Soleil thing: Kinect Star Wars. The video shows flying creatures, hitting things with lightsabers, all the stuff you’d imagine. The lights come up for a live demo. “Lightsaber ON!” says the guy on stage, exactly how a Star Wars character would say it if the movies were terrible.
10:36 — Yes, so this is pretty much the first game everybody thought of back when they saw the Wii in 2005. Microsoft got done what Nintendo didn’t.
10:37 — Tim Schafer has arrived to show us Once Upon a Monster, Double Fine’s Sesame Street game for Kinect.
