Well tonight was the first unveiling of Project Natal, now named Kinect. Microsoft shoved several thousand people into the Galen Center with Cirque Du Soleil, a lot of magic, great sound and visuals. Was the event worth the wait or was it a waste of time?
I showed up to the event at about 6:45, just like I planned. Although they said they would be letting people in at 7pm, I don’t think we started walking in until around 7:20. I met up with Aaron Greenberg for a few words, picked up my wristband and the wait began.
There were several hundred people in line. Probably a couple thousand. As the line moved and we got closer to the doors, you could see some of the performers outside beating drums and dancing. I have never been to a Cirque show before so I started to get excited about what they were going to show. Sway was there reporting for MTv with an Xbox branded Microphone, but the line was moving too fast for me to get a picture. Since I had an orange wristband I had to head to the right. I guess I was special.
As we walked into the center, we were instructed to put on these white jerseys with huge shoulder pads. Once size fits all so I was lucky. Everyone tossed them on and we were herded into the arena. It was beautiful. They set the whole place up with rocks, plant life, long projection screens that wrapped around the whole arena and performers dressed like Avatar rejects.
I pulled out my camera to get a shot of the floor but big brothers eyes were on all of us and I was shut down. I still got one fuzzy picture of what the arena looked like inside.
There was music playing the entire time while we were waiting for the event to start. Cirque performers were running around dancing and getting crowd members involved with their antics. The center floor was standing room only. They were filling the center area with people who were in line. I guess those are the guys with the green wristbands.
Once the event finally kicked off it was amazing. The music was loud and all the screens, which previously had avatars moving around in them, had turned into living room sets. A couch slowly dropped from the ceiling with a family of 3 sitting on it. An elephant, which at first I thought was real, strolled out and into the crowd.
There was so much going on it was hard to put it all together. Once all of that madness ended, a boy was moved to the top of these rocks. There were 3 rocks and 3 screens hanging from the ceiling. Each screen had a different game. He would play WITH a controller and then the game would go up in magical flames and the screen would retract to the ceiling. He would move to the next screen and rinse and repeat. The games on the screens were old ones like Kameo. The last rock, which was covered, was being moved closer to this larger white screen. As it moved the cover was taken off and it was revealed that it was a large Xbox ball. The X lit up green and so did everyone’s shoulder blades. Ahhh…I get it now.
The kid was facing a huge white screen which now had a giant avatar of himself on it. With each movement he made, the avatar on the screen would mimic it. So they basically just showed some kind of evolution with Kinect being the next level. Cool. Now when I was watching this kid do his thing, it looked like it was off a little bit. So I figured it was probably scripted, which wasn’t a bad thing. This is a show after all, not a demo.
I’m not going to go into detail about all the crazy stuff the performers did like walking on the ceiling,flying and bouncing a ball upside down, but I will tell you about what games we saw. They showed the water rafting game which was really cool. You basically control the raft with your body. If you jump, the raft jumps. You traverse down river rapids dodging and jumping and steering. At one point they showed us that two people could control the raft together. They showed more similar games like this where you would use your body to grab coins as you race on what looked like tracks. They showed an awesome track and field game, a racing game, bowling, a Tai Chi instruction game, Natal Animals and the megaton, a Star Wars game. Just like I theorized on the Warzone, this game allowed you to use a light saber and force powers with just your hands. It was beautiful and it was the one game that sold me on the system. At the end of that sequence, Darth Vader came out for a fight. So they are basically hinting at 1 on 1 Jedi battles too.
During the entire event you could see the performers doing all the motion in this huge floating room. Again, whether or not it was scripted didn’t matter to me. I won’t make any real impressions of the technology until I get my own hands on it. There’s been bashing and disappointment from some of the other outlets already. What did they expect? It was a great show, probably one of the best E3 shows to date. It looks like Microsoft spent all their Xbox Live money on this one. They SHOULD run this show in Vegas just to recoup. This event will be aired on Tuesday so you can see it all for yourself and get a better understand of what I was trying to convey here. The real nitty gritty will come to us tomorrow as we get pricing and REAL demos. They BETTER have Kinetic demos on the show floor or a lot of people will be disappointed. Right now however, there’s no reason to be pissed. Microsoft just kicked off E3 with a bang! The rest is yet to come.
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Almost all of the gaming journalist are bashing this event as one of the worst gaming events they have ever seen. I think you might have been the first to give it praise..And I will just leave it at that…
they came expecting something different… they’re morons… Microsoft just spent a fortune to basically entertain them and officially announce Kinect… the confrence is tomorrow…errr today
I don’t follow, I lead. You had to be there and understand what the event was all about. Those who are bashing it didn’t understand what it was about. I’ll leave it at that.
It’s nice that you do lead. But now you sort of sound like you are giving it praise to just be different from all the other journalist that have bashed it.
I can’t ever remember Tor doing anything like that… he just says it like he sees it… like I said before they came expecting something else… obviously Tor came expecting a show… because that was what this was… not something to demo the shit (though people did get to demo it… VIP section for cool cats like Felicia Day)
IM TYPING THIS IN CAPS TURN ON YOUR 360 TOR IS IN THE INSIDE 360 VIDEO TALKING ABOUT IT YOU KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO GET CRAP FOR SURE ABOUT BEING A XBOT NOW
So if he sounds like everyone else it’s cool but if he sounds different it’s him being all fake to be controversial? How does the guy win in that case then? By checking what direction the wind is blowing before he talks? Pffft.
i swear, sometimes torrence.lol you would make a great pr guy for MS. apparently only you got it.lol i laughed my ass off when you said it was a 1 size fit all t-shirt, whilst everyone else called it ponchos and sheets.lol
MAJOR FAILL!!! http://video.destructoid.com/#164345
Aaron hooked you up didn’t he
Best quote I’ve read so far was by IGN “For me, the highlight of the evening was watching Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki walk into the event in his white robe, taking in the scene behind his traditional sunglasses. He looked around a few times, stood quietly for a few moments and then turned around and left.” I think the biggest issue i’d of had if I was able to go there was pre recorded footage of games.I’m sure it’ll look great when MTV air their special though Thankfully the main conference should have some proper footage and games Did they have any of the new units on show?.
That’s what happens when you don’t serve liquor. And to be fair, he might have been afraid it was some kind of Ohm Shinriki/Heaven’s Gate/creepy-cult type stuff going on.
I would have probably done the same thing as Itagaki , its only fun to make yourself look stupid when you have consumed a 6 pack of carlsberg with your mates.
Tor called it Kinect at the beginning and then Kinetic at the end. I knew that choice of name was wrong. “…performers dressed like Avatar rejects.” – Priceless.
Lols, E3 2010: The Top 20 Kinected Press Reactions 20. @oliviamunn: Walked in late to Microsoft Natal E3 event with every single person in white rob shirt thing…. No. No, I don’t want any koolaid, thank u. 19. @jeffcannata: Yes, Kinect does nintendogs, too. But it is a tiger! Extreme! 18. @mattbertz: Somewhere in Los Angeles, Nintendo is laughing 17. @CheapyD: And the only thing better than playing motion control sports mini-games is watching video of other people playing them 16. @Vahn16: That Star Wars trailer was so obviously pre-rendered. I think this event is actually making me angry with it’s underwhelming-ness. 15. @CheapyD: I’m in a marketing acid trip! 14. @jwhdavison: At Microsoft thing. Wearing a white sheet, having stepped through a hole in the wall to be greeted by a family in multiple languages. 13. @Vahn16: If any creepy dancing people touch me, I will fight them. 12. @BenKuchera: Guys, you can take the ponchos off, it’s called kinect and it has Wii Sports. We know already. 11. @jeffcannata: You know what wod make this event better, Microsoft? Anything. 10. @DanRyckert: According to tweets I’ve seen, the Kinect event seems to involve: KKK members, magic smocks, floating couches, and people dancing on flowers 9. @GI_AndyMc: In any other place this many people in white sheets would be hit with tear gas. I hate myself right now. 8. @louiethecat: I don’t know WTF to think about this but I am scurred and wanna go home. 7. @Andrew_Reiner: I don’t even know what to say… 6. @jeffcannata: Microsoft now has a standing army. 5. @jeffgerstmann: So does Sony rename their thing to Müv or Mooove or something now to complete in the misspelled motion controller wars? 4. @Vahn16: From now on, when I’m embarassed, I’m going to imagine everyone in these ponchos. 3.@andrew pfister: Can’t wait to see what E3′s closing ceremony is like. 2.@Vahn16: The only way this could have been worse was if James Cameron came out and talked for two hours 1. @GI_AndyMc: Now I know why Robbie Bach quit. In Mexico they got call it, El Grande Fail
You dont follow you lead… really. You guys were sheep been herded into the ps2 tech show, you called the star wars demo amazing then said you will reserved judgement until you play it, you were born confused my friend . You saw that was a fake also right ? reversed brain reading movement lag ftw… eat the grass torrence, why the poncho. something wrong with kinetic ?
you just stick to hiphopgamer and ps3 stuff, theres a good chap.
Dinosaur nerd smells a hater.
most of the demos were staged, no real game play all scripted like milo from last year, im not into this casual rubbish
Tor are you going to the Microsoft press conference on the 14th?
yes Aaron got him in you should follow him on twitter
Cheers for the update, do you know if he will be doing a live blog? I will get twitter once I get a new smart phone lol.
nice read keep the post coming torrence and take some quick pics and videos. as for the event i knew it would be all smoke and mirror BS. c’mon its microsoft!
Yeah I wish they would have more natal games etc…. but what did we expect for something open to the public? E3 Doesn’t start till tomorrow so I’m sure they were going to hold off on some stuff for their actual press conference. Why show your cards when its not live? Wouldn’t you rather wait till the big televised event the next day? Or would you prefer bloggers to talk about your good products? Who knows… we will see… im not big on motion controls but not tooo quick to judge yet either.
I think the disappointment is because of the games they showed. Besides the starwars game which from what I read was like the clone wars cartoon there were no “hardcore” games using this tech. Maybe today at the conference they will show off fable and a few others but the description of the games sounds like shit you wid find in those 34 in 1 joystick pack games at the drug store. As for comments about the show it self I take them as trying to be comical
lmao yeah I think if… and its “if” because I don’t know…. but if they have any games to appeal to the hardcore etc ready…. I expect it at the real conference not a Pre E3 public showing
Casual oriented motion gaming has the industry by the throat now. Might as well accept it. Us “aging demographic legacy gamers” get to sit in the cheap seats from now on. The press kit for the MS conference says that from now on we “have “Xbox for everyone” and “Xbox Core” as major branches of their branding probably including Kinect.
Sounds like Microsoft has nothing for this ready and this was a cover ?
MS have a conference later on today that already has a press kit out. So your “theory” doesn’t really make any sense.
Gaming journalists are so cynical. MS basically treated all these people to a free show and there’s nothing but b!shing going on. The games were probably unimpressive but: 1) these are tech demos/launch titles for a product that is brand new and 2) even if the games were unimpressive I think Kinect shows a lot of potential for non-gaming uses (voice recognition, controller-free navigation of the dash, face recognition, etc). Lots of potential there.
Agreed and video chat.
i’m not judging either move or natal until they have been shown properly at the conferences
http://kotaku.com/5562639/ 20 second clip of Star Wars, no sound.
Same thing as Milo. It looks staged. It didn’t look like the character on the screen was doing what the person was doing but rather that the person on the stage was trying to match his body to the actions of the character on the screen. Again, it’s early and maybe they just wanted to give an idea of what they were going for. If the game has a lightsaber peripheral it could be really really special.
Which why I am waiting for the actual live showing vs a play which should have honestly been expected you were not going to see alot of live demoing. It is pretty clear who this was aimed for because people on the net are writin it off because of what it showed when both MS and Son have live showings in addition to demos for everyone to try out. Some people were harting from the get go and will hate regardless.
If that clip really sold tor then wow color me shocked. 185(rumored price) does not justify that.
guys check this out the first 3 posts LMAO http://forums.gametrailers.com/thread/official-kinect-thread–natal-/1081235?page=14
i have yet to see a real person sit in front of kinect and play a game live except for the red ball game. not even dj torrence can spin this prerecorded crap. torrence you’re doing some major ass kissing out there.
Both ms and Sony of done this so I don’t understand why there’s so much anti ms when Sony has done te same thing countless times. The move is wii on roids. It’s bullshit kinects is bullshit
i agree with you its silly both companys are going after wii at this point not sony or ms is doing one thing better then the other when it comes to this motion thing.the things are not on shelves yet just going off what ppl say and how they feel about a certain company ppl need to relax
what a boring ass confrences all the announced shit is crap other than star wars which looked pre recorded. kinetic sports = wii sports Kinectimals = eyepet and nintendogs Dance Central = plz kill me???
It wasn’t a conference. It was an event. The actual MS conference is today and begins in about a half hour. Glow smocks are optional.
Interesting, will get this for sure as well as the star wars game.
seriously i dont need a massive stage show for something to sell, i think its over hype for the sake of it, i dont need a celebrity to tell me about a product. ive seen the footage and i think the kinect games are awful, but ill be honest i dont think they are aimed at me or any hardcore gamers, move and kinect are aimed at the wii audience, but how many wiis are dust magnets? it almost seems like a bad joke coming into motion control after nintendo already did it. i agree with sixamp, all motion is bs to me anyway, i think they both have their work cut out trying to poach wii customers, even wii customers only buy 1st party, have you seen how many games are out for wii now ? i read most kinect games will be £29.99 damn purely casual then, better get ubisoft to design a dance game for kinect, oops someone already did !!! piss poor
Instead of putting on this big show they should have saved the money and invested in more games. Shows are good once but the games can last forever. MS would be in alot better position if they spent their money wisely. Invest in 1st party and invest in more natal and leave out the cirque de gay Also to those wondering It was indeed not in real time as proved by this gif. Pay attention to the arms http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment/9/2010/06/07757512fe01652a77d524cf51795baf/340x.gif.
I don’t get you people. 1 minute MS is evil because they don’t care about their customers, then when MS does something nice to entertain you at their cost, they again are doing something wrong. Listen. MS has A LOT of money. The cost of this FREE show for the media didn’t do any kind of damage to their finances. So they didn’t NEED to save the money and put it towards games. They put the money towards something special for the people and media.
What do you mean “you people”. Nobody has ever claimed ms to be evil for not caring about the customers. To think that MS just has money to throw around in this economy is not smart on your part. I thought torrence banned you?
“What do you mean “you people”.’ - You people as in the ignorant uninformed typical Sony fanboy everything MS does is wrong. “To think that MS just has money to throw around in this economy is not smart on your part.’ Were you not just saying: “Instead of putting on this big show they should have saved the money and invested in more games.” Well, there you go. MS apparently had money to spend on this event during these economic times. My god you don’t even pay attention to the things you write. MS knows their finances a HELL of a lot better than you. It would appear that the economic times of today had no issue what so ever in being able to afford a FREE show for the media. Since we saw that MS did have the money to afford the show, it would appear that it WAS smart of me to think MS has the money to throw around in this economy. I mean it wasn’t exactly rocket science…if MS did it, then they could afford it, you comment was answered before you even wrote it. Use your head. “I thought torrence banned you?” - Happy to disappoint
Good article. Nice to see someone understands what a “show” is. I have read a few articles and some (not all) have something negative to say about it. Not sure what the “Journalist” were expecting. Not sure I remember when Sony or Nintendo ever created a show as large as Cirque du Soleil…actually, I don’t recall Sony or Nintendo EVER doing a FREE large show for the Media. You know…that same MEDIA that BASHES their games and company name. The ones that always seem to have an anti-MS agenda. And here is MS just providing an experience to the media and all they get is backlash. Well Kudos to you Torrence for calling it as it was, An amazingly FREE show that you will remember forever. To get that kindof experience, tickets for Cirque du Soleil would cost you around $150 yet the Media got in for free, which means MS fronted the cost…some people are just so ungrateful.
I agree with the sentiment in general but the smocks did creep me out. It looked like what I imagine a Raelian convention must look like. I think without that smocks the show would have been corny staged fun, if a bit grandiose what with the meditating on a giant xbox guide button and all. Adding the smocks was real turn off for me. It doesn’t represent a positive image. It’s inherently nutty. Dressing up game press to look like cultists awaiting the cyber rapture just reminds me of Heaven’s Gate. I wish that MS would get away from the futurism lifestyle and mysticism elements of their presentation style. I get the message that they are trying to bring us a new transformatonal paradigm or whatever that will change everything if we let it but it doesn’t play that well. Anyway, hopefully the conference wll be more down to earth and impressivefor people who want to see the meat and potaoes part of the Kinect produc line and the new 360.
This is the video game industry fuck circus shows we want games.
If the media thought “fuck circus shows” then they didn’t have to go to it. And the “video game industry” falls under the category of “Entertainment” which is exactly what MS was trying to do, Entertain you. Clearly the message is lost with certain individuals.
Good read Torrence, I don’t know what people were expecting either. We’ll see what happens in a few minutes, when E3 gets rolling!
WOW! The defense is in high gear i see. The show LOOKED creepy and it was perceived as such and worse by those who actually ATTENDED. So we give this a quick nod and excuse it because it was free? uh okay, that’s not how i judge my experiences. If there was one word that could describe the show it would be Underwhelmed.
“So we give this a quick nod and excuse it because it was free? uh okay, that’s not how i judge my experiences” I see what you’re saying, I feel the same way about PSN.