Naz: 10pm Sunday
Well, E3 2010 has officially kicked off with Microsoft's debut of Kinect (formerly Project Natal) at a glitzy event at the Galen Center. To say I was disappointed with Kinect would be putting it mildly. After waiting at the Galen Center for a couple of hours, other than the name, Kinect, nothing was revealed except a handful of pre-recorded demos where actors clearly pretended to control the on-screen characters (avatars) with their own body movement. At several points the avatars would move before the actors did, ruining the illusion of a real live demo of Kinect. This body-synch debacle makes Milli Vanilli's legendary lip-synch outrage look tame by comparison.
The Kinetic 'body-synchs' that were shown off included rafting down a river, Olympics, yoga, a mildly cool Star Wars demo where the avatar slashed enemies and reflected laser bolts, a tiger pet patting simulation and a handful of other disappointing snippets. The Kinetic camera was also shown navigating on-screen menus with cool Minority Report-style waves of your hand, as well as video conferencing. I'll be able to report a lot more definitively tomorrow once I've actually tested out Kinetic but for the moment the body-synch balls-up has left a bad taste in my mouth. Laughably, a huge animatronic elephant with in-built projector screens was the highlight of the crazy spectacle.
A very disappointing first act, Microsoft. Let's hope tomorrow things can be turned around.
Patch: 11:48pm Sunday
Look, it has to be said: that was one of the single biggest cluster****s I've ever seen at a games event, hands down. With the eyes of the world on Microsoft, it decides that the best course of action, for whatever profound reason, is notto truly unveil much of anything. Instead, the audience is assaulted with a strange and shambolic mess of pretentious garbage, muddy messaging and glimpses of very uninspiring games. Good lord. Tomorrow morning's press conference is going to have to pull some impressive rabbits out of the hat to rectify this bizarre misfire. Truly, tonight will live on in our minds right up there with Giant Enemy Crab and Wii Music air-drumming. Facepalm
). 2. In an attempt to steal viewers from Sony's show the Kinect conference is supposed to be airing on MTV at the same time as Sony's live conference. It's a no brainer as to which of those two I'd rather watch. So will wait for the net to get the MTV show and watch it on Youtube or something at a later date.
