Microsoft definitely had many big announcements at this year’s press conference, the biggest of which was the unveiling of Kinetic, which was formally known as Project Natal, as well as a raft of new games that will be coming out for this new device. Some of the more hard core titles looked impressive, like the new Metal Gear Solid game, but then there were also a ton of games that just made little sense to me other than to try and copy Nintendo. Mainly, the new Kinetic Sports which is a complete knock off of Nintendo's Wii Sports. Everything about Kinetic Sports looks ripped off from the character models that look like Mii's, to many of the sports themselves.
But Kinetic wasn't all bad. Kinetic has some cool features like their recognition features which can recognize who you are when you walk into the room. Kinetic also has an ability to measure your dimensions which will demonstrate its usefulness in Ubisoft's new fitness game for Kinetic. Finally, the way that you navigate menus with your hands does look kind of interesting. So I do feel some optimism about Kinetic, as long as it works as demonstrated. There was one hiccup with one of the demos, so I hope it was simply just the lighting that affected how Kinetic was working.
One surprise announcement that Microsoft made was their new Xbox 360, which is much slimmer than the original and has built in Wi-Fi and a 250G hard drive. Ok, maybe it’s not too surprising of an announcement since on the weekend Microsoft's new console was accidentally outed by a new Italian ad featuring the console. One question that I wished was answered at the press conference is, will this new Xbox 360 red ring? But for some reason that question was skipped.
All in all, Microsoft's press conference was very impressive, which makes me wonder just how Nintendo will top Microsoft. In any case we will have to wait till tomorrow to find out. So what do you think? Is Kinetic everything that you were looking for? Or do you not care about Kinetic?
