kinect

LOS ANGELES--The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo is a very visually oriented experience, with game companies spending heavily to create compelling show floor experiences to lure in attendees. You'll typically find plenty of costumed characters, giant physical structures that can hardy be called booths, and more flatscreen TVs per square inch than at your average Costco.

We captured some of the most notable sights from the show floor, as well as from the Sony and Nintendo press conferences. Highlights include some caged zombies from Capcom's Dead Rising, Nintendo godfather Shigeru Miyamoto demoing his latest Zelda game, and the most … Read more

LOS ANGELES--After trying out both the Microsoft Kinect and Nintendo 3DS, we got to test-drive the third big hardware product of E3 2010, Sony's PlayStation Move. We've actually tried the Move before, at its original announcement during the Game Developers Conference earlier in 2010, but this was our chance to dive deeper into some of the launch games.

Of the three major motion-control peripherals for game consoles, the Wiimote, Kinect camera, and Move controller, it's Sony's device that looks the most garish. The black flashlight handle stick is topped with a ball that can change color, depending on its use in a particular game (the ball is actually soft to the touch, which always seems to surprise people), and it looks a lot more like game hardware than Nintendo's understated white controller or the Kinect's multimedia-looking Webcam.

Aside from that, we'd have to say that in terms of acting purely as a video game peripheral, the PlayStation Move is currently our favorite entry in the motion control competition. Kinect works well enough, but it's not always as responsive as you'd want, or at least that's how some of the games we tried felt. Plus, Kinect's opening game lineup is somewhat generic, with more proof-of-concept games than titles that would stand up without the Kinect tie-in. In fact, the Kinect's biggest strength has been largely unheralded--it's excellent ability to recognize and respond to voice commands, which is useful for home theater tasks.… Read more

LOS ANGELES--Can someone please tell me why we've spent the last two days rehashing the highlights of E3 2009?

If you were here for last year's video game mega-convention, you will recall that the big news from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo was the true dawn of the motion control wars. Microsoft unveiled Project Natal, Sony showed off its prototype system, and Nintendo pulled back the wraps on some new improvements to the Wii Motion Plus.

All told, these innovations were going to take us to the next level of video game play, where it's all about gesture-based control and traditional button-based controllers became a thing of the past.

Flash forward to this week, though, and the highlights of the press conferences, at least Sony's and Microsoft's, seem someone familiar. Let's recap. At Microsoft's event on Monday, the biggest news was the formal unveiling of Kinect. This, of course, used to be known as Project Natal.

Microsoft announced that the device would be available November 4 and was able for the first time to name some actual games that will be Kinect-enabled. There will be 15 launch titles, including Ubisoft's Michael Jackson game, as well as six that were featured during the press event, Dance Central, a dancing game from Rock Band developer Harmonix; Kinect Sports, a game that offers soccer, bowling, track, and more; Kinect Joy Ride, a racing game; Kinect Adventures, a game for navigating down rivers and railroad tracks while trying to hit targets; Your Shape, an exercise game; and Kinectimals. However, the demo was very much like the one from a year earlier. … Read more

A roundup of short video clips from Microsoft's press briefing at E3 2010, where it unveiled a new Xbox, announced the latest lineup of games for its console, and showed just what its Kinect motion-sensor technology can do.

Xbox 360 media briefing at E3 2010 CNET's Brian Tong runs through the highlights from Microsoft's E3 showcase on Monday. There's a new Xbox 360 that's a whole lot smaller, Microsoft Kinect uses your body as the controller and introduces a new Xbox 360 interface, and hardcore gamers get their fix of Gears of War 3, Halo: … Read more

Having had a few opportunities to play around with Microsoft's Kinect camera peripheral over the past year (then it was still called Project Natal), we were eager to try the seemingly finalized version displayed at E3 (see the video below for highlights from our hands-on session).

The first thing we noticed was that the Kinect hardware was visually very close (as far as we could tell) to the demo devices seen as far back as E3 2009, despite rumblings from Microsoft reps during the year that the design was subject to change. It's a physically large device, and … Read more

While the actual E3 show doesn't officially start until Tuesday, today is what longtime attendees traditionally call E3: Day Zero.

With press conferences from Microsoft, EA, and others, much of the week's news has already been made--most notably by the Kinect camera peripheral for Xbox 360.

If you haven't kept up on all the E3 news today, this slideshow will give you a quick tour of the highlights and lowlights, and hopefully give you a few things to get excited about for the next several days of E3 action.

LOS ANGELES--Video game maker Ubisoft announced Monday that it expects to publish a game in time for holiday 2010 based on the life and performances of Michael Jackson.

According to a release from Ubisoft, which was timed to the E3 video game convention, the game, which doesn't yet have a name, will be available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS, and Sony PlayStation Portable. It will also be compatible with Kinect for Xbox and PlayStation Move.

Although it is planned for a holiday 2010 release, it's not clear if it will be one of the 15 … Read more

news analysis LOS ANGELES--If one thing was clear in the lead-up to the Xbox 360 E3 press conference, it was that hard-core gamers felt threatened by Microsoft's obvious move toward casual gaming with its forthcoming Kinect motion control system.

But while the company is indeed hoping Kinect and its ease of use and accessibility to just about anyone can help it capture a much larger audience, it also wants its longtime loyalists to know they haven't been forgotten.

That much was evident at the press conference, which took place here Monday morning. Before Kinect was ever mentioned, those in the audience were blasted with demos of purely hard-core titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops, Metal Gear Solid: Rising, Halo: Reach, and Gears of War 3. The new Call of Duty, from the developer Treyarch, rather than Infinity Ward, which made the record-breaking Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, will be released on November 9, while Halo: Reach is expected in September. … Read more