Topic: Microsoft E3 Press Conference: Impressions and Ratings?

Maybe, but you had a better summary of the games shown. The core titles shown early on didn't impress me that much (not bad, just not blowing away any expectations) so I left them out. I guess that the Crytek partnership might be interesting though...

One question about the dance game: did anyone else notice those little squares showing you motions to make? It looked like this is an equivalent to Guitar Hero where you approximate a hand/body motion within the allotted time and the game responds with an on-screen reward. So even though the demo looked slick, I suspect that little to no actual dancing is involved which is a real shame. It'll still be fun, just not as cool as it looks on stage. (Hopefully I'm wrong though, because it would be really cool to have a true dancing game.)

Well below average.

The Good:
Kinect looks great as an "interface" tool. Really does, very cool to go through the menu like that. The sequels looked good.

The OK:
That's a decent redesign, and it's about time they put in built-in Wifi. Even our old Wii came with built-in Wifi. The fitness game from Ubisoft can work.

The Bad:
Dancing game. Also, the Star War game felt choppy and un-fluid, (the robots shot from far, but once they were close they did nothing) which wouldn't be so bad if that had been an early demo. But no, it was not a playable demo. It was a video. Rule #1, if you are going to only show "gameplay" video of a game, make it look good. That's either lazy or the game is worse. Either way, thumbs down for the execution. (Example of this: Zelda Wii. Almost a full year ago, all we have from it is a conceptual artwork. And it looks good. Epic Mickey is another example, so effective that they had to delay in order to try and go back to the look of the conceptual. If you are going to give us something early, making it look good is better than giving more of it.)

The Ugly:
No price point for Kinect, and none of those tittles packed-in? Ummm... better be real cheap or it may completely bomb with such a high install price. (XBox+Kinect+Kinect game. Remember, they are really going for the casuals, not primarily the core 360 gamers. Other than the "interface" use, all they were pushing is for the Wii's audience.) Oh yeah, and the sports games. Were. Just. Terrible. Seemed like the shovelware sports stuff we have on the Wii, and not like the quality of Wii Sports/WSR. Complaining about the Wii's waggle? This is "body waggle". I'll just take my Wii Sports, thank you very much.

Just my 2 cents.

It's a C- in my book.

Wasn't really a wow factor at all, and Kinect was rather spoiled for everyone so they expected nothing more and nothing less.

They are?...I don't think they are with EA, guess I'll give that some more wait then. (but somehow I still doubt it'll be shown...)

what's wrong with the dancing game? I liked it and it looked like it flowed your movements accurately.

Well, I'm just glad to finally see this Wii Sports Retort in action.

_{I've been wanting to use that pun all day, forgive me}

Why couldn't you show the girl who went up or fist or when all three were playinb.

Dance Central : Teaching white people how to dance one move at a time.

Yeah, that was lol. The woman was awesome though.

That is funny but why do you keep showing the crappy parts just show the whole video of her dancing.

Shinji: Why would anyone want to do that?

Um. . . would you guys stop quoting the images and videos when you quote each other? No need to repeat each of them for every comment, just say it like this: @Swiket -your video is funny

@Swiket: Nice and sexy.

You've ever been to a party or club or even to non formal dance competition.

Like @ejamer said this is most likely not even going to turn out being a dancing game. It looked like the game looks for you to approximate certain moves at certain points. Look his post, I think it's #21 or something. Couldn't have said it better. It will be like DDR where you just have to "hit the sports at a certain time".

I think this is a hardware limitation reason. Kinetic seems to have a half second delay. This is not a criticism, just a fact. If anything, it's responsiveness seems better than I expected it would be. You can REALLY see it during the fitness demo with the girl and she's doing Yoga. This delay effectively limits "rhythm" games. So, even IF they wanted to make the game be a real dancing game it wouldn't work with how they showed it. They showed us a game where you match the motions.

good point. i still see that being the freestyle mode of the game.

Yeah, that's fair to say.

I expected MS to come out with a big announcement. The proverbial megaton. Even though their presentation didn't have glaring faults, it lacked any hook to really grab attention and definitely focused more on casual gaming than I had hoped.

Also, I wanted to be sure to save lots of room on both sides of this grading curve after Nintendo set the bar for how low E3 presentations can go in recent years.

I was talking about showing a video...
The game itself is going to sell like crazy for sure. It'll be the new DDR (if Kinect sells, that is.)

sorry though you meant the actual dance moves.

7/10

Rising looks bad, tigers are bad and Kinect seems to work. Still a bit cynical.

(lack of new games and a strong Kinect IP are the bads)

Personally, I will continue to have reservations about this until I see it in action. I can't imagine that my hand movements will be read correctly whether or not I'm sitting, leaning, lying down, slouching, whatever...nor can I imagine that it won't register my change in position as some kind of desire to turn the movie off or skip a chapter. To say nothing of the cat darting from left to right in front of me fast-forwarding the film...but I admit, until I see it in action, I'm probably assuming the technology to be less advanced than it really is. I can accept that.

But here's the thing...even if we accept that Natal / Kinect / Wizzlewazzle works flawlessly as a remote control...that's one heck of an expensive remote control. If that's the best thing it can do, and the most I can hope for it to do well (as the jerky, flickering avatars in much of the footage so far do suggest), then that is one heck of a waste of $200.

I guess it'd be nice to wave my hand and have my DVD player know what I want it to do. I...guess. But I'll quote Mr. Burns on this one: "I think I'd be happier with the dollar."