Microsoft’s much-awaited Project Natal finally gets an official name- “Kinect”. Beside the re-branding, a number of Kinect titles were also made known in the USA Today report, including a Star Wars game from Lucasarts, a Disney game, a dance title from MTV, a pet-training title, a Wii Sports clone called “Kinect Sports”, an adventure sports game and, as expected, the return of Joyride as a motion-controlled game.
“For lots of people, that controller is a barrier,” Microsoft creative director Kudo Tsunoda told USA Today. “We set out to make a new control paradigm where anybody can get in and play, without having to read the instructions or learn a complicated set of controls.”
Sunday night, Microsoft hosted a special presentation by Cirque du Soleil at the Galen Center in Los Angeles Sunday and formally unveiled Kinect for Xbox 360. Previously known as Project Natal, the system is Microsoft’s motion controller. While it shows a lot of promise, but one thing is already clear where the company is going with Kinect, and Nintendo’s Wii, its Wii Fit software and Balance Board hardware and Wii Sports game are in Microsoft’s sights.
Bleszinski called the event “kinda awesome” as he took it in.”I think Microsoft just took a nice step towards ‘entertainment’ from ‘software’,” he wrote on Twitter, after reporting: “Nobody has any idea what’s going on. 6 game journos on the ground floor, all terrified… Haha this is kind of awesome actually.”
Microsoft’s event included a trippy performance from Cirque Du Soleil and various off the wall features – such as a white poncho for every attendee and a real life elephant. Yes, you read that correctly.
Tags: balance board, cirque du soleil, disney game, joyride, kinect, kinect sports, star wars game, twitter, usa today, Wii, wii fit, Xbox 360, xbox kinect