Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor is a disappointment for two reasons: it is flawed at a fundamental level, which is frustrating in and of itself; and those flaws mar what could have been one of the most amazing videogame experiences of this hardware generation. The game itself is a truly impressive example of the medium and its potential. But because of the hardware limitations of the Kinect, Steel Battalion is a game whose reach exceeds its grasp.

Gameplay & Control

The gameplay mechanics and controls of Steel Battalion are so interwoven, it’s impossible to discuss them separately. Their reliance on each other means that they succeed and fail together. And when they fail together, they do so spectacularly.

You take control of a vertical tank, or “veet,” which is basically a tank with legs. You’re in charge of piloting the vehicle, as well as aiming and firing weapons. You’re also tasked with venting asphyxiating smoke, shuttering the view-port to avoid being shot to death, popping the hatch to scope out targets with your binoculars or fight off soldiers, dump grenades enemy soldiers manage to drop into your tank’s cockpit, manage the feelings and discipline of the men and women under your command, and a seemingly endless amount of other duties.

The game’s tutorial covers tank-control basics. The controller’s analog sticks move the veet and aim its weapons, while the shoulder buttons fire primary and secondary weapons. This all works really well. The tank feels sufficiently heavy and bulky, and the terrain under its feet affects the agility (or lack thereof) with which it can maneuver in battle. Shooting enemies is always tough, since the tank’s walking movement shifts your gun sights up and down accordingly. Successfully taking down enemy tanks and their own mechanized weaponry takes a lot of work, but in a game so devoted to presenting a “realistic” experience of piloting a tank with legs, the high challenge of completing each mission feels consistent, if not always necessarily fair.

The game’s difficulty is very high. Your field of view is severely limited within the cockpit, another dash of realism in this science fiction world that made me appreciate the developers’ creation. Listening to your squadmates and the tank itself (such as its mine detector) is often the difference between life and death, and victory never comes easy. Successfully destroying enemy veets is also a tricky proposition—sometimes they go down after only a few hits with armor piercing rounds, while other times you could hit them dozens of times without seeming to make a dent. Maybe you have to find the weak spot? Taking out their legs seems to work…sometimes. The specific recipe for success is never spelled out, though; again, that’s either a testament to the game’s devotion to wartime realism or simply a lack of balance.

But regardless of the game’s difficulty in and of itself, the Kinect-based controls often make what should be merely a really hard game into one that’s nearly impossible. Hand gestures are used for just about every action that isn’t moving and shooting, and that’s a hugely significant portion of the experience. Even something as simple as switching ammo is achieved by “hitting” a button right below the tank’s view port. Other gesture-based actions include the aforementioned smoke-venting, which requires you to push away from the view port, grab a control box on your right, pull it towards you, and pull a lever down to open the vent. But the tank’s headlight switch is right above the lever, so you’ll be flicking your lights on and off a few times before you actually vent the smoke. If you don’t vent the smoke in time, all the cockpit’s inhabitants die of smoke inhalation and the mission restarts. When you manage to get all this right, you feel like you’re there, and that feeling is wonderfully exhilarating—especially after successfully completing a mission. But the Kinect’s success rate for accurately recognizing what you’re trying to do is probably around 50 or 60 percent—and that might be a generous estimate.

Even trying to accomplish conceptually easy tasks, like pulling the steel shutter over the view port after the protective glass has been blown away, is a struggle. The Kinect sees you reaching in front of you with your right hand to grab the shutter, but thinks you’re actually looking to the vent-control box. A mad struggle for recognition ensues, during which the Kinect decides you’re actually reaching for the periscope. Then you die after an RPG finds its way into the cockpit.

Sometimes you have to change your view within the cockpit to interact with your companions, interactions that range from morale-boosting fist-bumps to pulling shrapnel from a comrade’s chest, or shooting an intruder threatening to stab your communications officer. Pulling off these  actions in the heat of battle is hard enough considering your tank is being bombarded with missiles and bullets.

But actually achieving the right gestures to accomplish these abstract, non-tank-related actions is usually guesswork. Take, for example, the aforementioned intruder-shooting moment. After hearing your officer yell for help, you push away from the view port and turn to rescue her by swiping your left hand in front of the screen. The game tells you to use your pistol to shoot the intruder. Well…how? And when did I get a pistol? This if the first I’ve heard of it. Do I just point with my finger and pretend like I’m firing? Do I bring my controller with me and mash the trigger?

I did all of these things and more (I even started yelling “bang bang!”) in my many replays of that mission, sometimes successfully fighting off the attacker, sometimes failing, resulting in the communications officer getting stabbed to death and slumping into a bloody heap. Other times the game suddenly has your character exit the tank and crawl onto the battlefield to rescue an injured soldier, or set off explosives, or fight off an attacker on your tank’s roof. It was never clear how to do any of this, and most of the time I flailed wildly, hoping not to get shot and have to start the mission over. These sequences reminded me a lot of a next-gen Dragon’s Lair, in that the game expects you to make a very definite set of movements at very specific times—and not meeting its vaguely defined expectations means total failure.

This uncertainty of success may in fact accurately simulate the intensity found in actual battle—your heart pumps, your hands sweat and shake, and you never know if you’ll make it out alive. But that uncertainty should only come from high-stakes gameplay, not endless hardware hiccups or undefined motion cues.

When Kinect fails, playing Steel Battalion seems like driving an experimental car, but with an intricate set of pulleys that you’re never sure how to use…all while sitting in the back seat. It’s hard not to marvel at the level of detail that went into this walking tank simulator. But it’s even harder to forgive the horribly ineffective methods you’re forced to employ to drive the bastard. The controller’s four face buttons and D-pad go completely unused in the game, and I longed for the opportunity to map some of the more basic tasks to them. I can only imagine how much better the game would be if I could chuck my Kinect and play with just the controller.

Story

Steel Battalion takes place in the 2080s, a few decades after “Datacide.” A silicon-eating microbe has ravaged the globe and destroyed humanity’s more advanced technology, leaving the world without computers and electronics. What’s left is technology reminiscent of the mid-twentieth century, relying on vacuum tubes and simple electricity. Moreover, the “United Nations” is now the name for a coalition of powers across Asia that’s managed to take over much of the world, including what was once the United States. As part of the struggling American military, you’re fighting in a last-ditch effort to reclaim your country and regain independence.

The plot’s broad strokes unfold during cutscenes, most of which have little to do with your in-game avatar, Sergeant Winfield Powers. The rise to power of the United Nations, referred to pejoratively as “Uncles” by you and your comrades, aren’t really spelled out in the game. You have to read the manual if you want to know specifically what’s happened to the world. But bits and pieces of the story do unfold within the cockpit, during which you get to know your squad mates and their personalities. As you complete missions, you receive letters for the members of your platoon, all of which helps flesh out each soldier’s story.

The dialogue is pretty good, if sometimes a little on-the-nose or slightly awkward when being spoken by human mouths. But the dialogue between your squadmates and the chatter over the radio is often crucial for success. That’s because there isn’t much help from the game itself in terms of specific directives. Your fellow soldiers will call out to reveal where you’re taking damage and where your enemies are, a boon since there aren’t comprehensive maps or radar-displays to help you in your objectives.

By the same token, sometimes deciphering your next move or objective from the dialogue can be frustrating. Again, the game’s commitment to realism is both a strength and a weakness: it’s extremely satisfying to be tuned-in enough with the world of the story to figure out your mission and complete it. But often that means a ton of trial-and-error to determine where to go and what to do once you arrive. Occasionally the dialogue cues don’t seem to match up with the game’s action, but this problem isn’t too pervasive. Overall, the rich, full story created for Steel Battalion is remarkable, and one of the factors that helps this game rise above its debilitating control problems.

Visuals

The world presented to players in Steel Battalion is extremely impressive. Navigating a bombed-out, deserted Manhattan or the French countryside is visually stunning, and the level of detail presented both inside the veet and outside is staggering. The environments feel lived-in, and the game’s frame rate stays pretty fluid throughout. In addition, the movement of the tank feels realistic, as do the movements of the enemy units you’re trying to kill. The colors, too, reflect the mid-twentieth century war movie feel the game aims to represent. Night missions utilize a lot of grays and blues with flashes of red for explosions, while daytime missions are saturated with dusty browns. The game just looks great.

It’s not perfect, though. Mouth animations rarely match up with the dialogue, and the other characters you encounter oscillate between looking too real and not real enough. They occupy that space in the uncanny valley that makes crew interactions a bit creepy and not as engaging as advertised.

Now, as to whether or not you consider the limited HUD, field of vision, and aforementioned aiming difficulties a virtue or a drawback is down to your perspective. Advanced, informative radar displays don’t fit in with this game’s aesthetic, nor would the ability to change views to give a better look at the action going on around your tank.  You’re stuck in your cockpit, unless your character physically leaves the tank’s confines. This realism doesn’t make the game any easier (or more fun) to play, but you’ve got to respect its level of commitment.

Sound

In the heat of battle, there isn’t any music or soundtrack—it’s mostly the complaints or screams of your fellow soldiers and the sounds of battle raging outside. Hearing everything that’s said is basically impossible, which is why leaving captions on is a must in order to gain enough information to carry out the missions. Turning sound effects down to hear more dialogue doesn’t work either, since you’d be without your mine detector, which beeps when you’re close to taking a step that’ll leave you without a leg.

The voice acting is mostly pretty sharp. The character of each soldier comes through in the vocal performances. As for the sound effects themselves, they’re yet another way in which the game makes you feel as though you’re truly in the heat of a vicious land battle, your teeth rattling with every explosion, your adrenaline spiking with every bullet that whizzes by.

Bottom Line

Steel Battalion was supposed to be the game that finally legitimized the purchase of the Kinect. And when the motion controls actually work, you feel completely and legitimately immersed in the game. It’s an incredible feeling, and one that’s tough to shake.

But much of the time, the controls simply don’t work, and instead of feeling immersed, you feel enraged and helpless. If the graphics, story, or even gameplay mechanics weren’t as good as they are, I wouldn’t be wasting my time with a game with such messy, unreliable controls.

If you feel confident in your tolerance of the Kinect’s janky motion-detection, give this game a shot. There’s still enough amazing content to warrant a buy. But until the Kinect reaches a level of sensitivity and accuracy that this game needs for it to truly reach its potential, you may want to consider staying out of the cockpit entirely.

6/10

A post on the BethBlog today offers up details of what Xbox gamers all across the land will be yelling at their televisions when they download the new Kinect-functionality patch for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, available today.

Apparently gamers will be able to shout things in Dragon-talk (which requires holding down the right bumper), or yell the translations in plain, but much more boring English (which requires no button pressing at all). The post notes that French, Italian, German, and Spanish are still in testing. It makes me happy to think that you’ll be able to yell in Spanish. That would sound crazy.

“¡Flecha a la rodilla!”

Muy fantastico.

Check out the command list below, or enjoy them as a PDF right here:

Via BethBlog

By now, it’s to be expected that different retailers will offer different extras and bonuses for pre-ordering big-time games with them. Such is the case with Capcom’s upcoming Kinect-based title, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, which, to my eyes, may wind up being the game to finally make really good use of the Kinect.

Check out the bonuses below, complete with imagery of what each bonus armor will look like. Knowing Capcom, these bonuses will likely be available for purchase pretty soon down the line, if not immediately. So it all depends on what you want to get first, and for free.

Ska-blam:

I can’t keep up with everything, you know. Case in point: apparently there’s a band I’ve never heard of called New Look that shot a video called “Nap on the Bow” with the Microsoft Kinect way back in October—and, as  you can see, the result is pretty freakin’ cool.

According to a post on directors’ Tim and Joe’s blog, they wanted to go for an underwater-type thing for the video, and once they got the band’s permission, they started experimenting with the Kinect’s infrared motion-capturing technology.

“The way the Kinect captures in 3D meant we could add camera moves and changes in focus afterwards. We were also able to manipulate their footage, making it dissolve and dissipate particles. One other interesting thing we discovered, a product of the fact the camera only collects the 3D data from the angle it sees, this effectively means you get half a 3D image. When you rotate the image 90 degrees past the angle you’ve shot from you suddenly see the inverted version of the image. When looking at the band we found we really liked these inverted versions. They create a really interesting optical illusion as you move back and forth and it was this effect that we utilized to give us the circular tracking shot, which became the centre piece of the video.”

Whatever your feelings are about the song, you can’t deny how cool the video looks because of the Kinect’s weird video-capturing capabilities. I get excited whenever the device is used for great, creative things besides crappy games.

More, please.

Via The Atlantic

Tomorrow’s the big day for Xbox 360 owners—time to get all worked up over a new dashboard, which will drive angry internet-commenters to wrack and ruin with their anger and frustration over something different that is similar yet not exactly the same as the thing that they already know. There will be much gnashing of teeth and furious keyboard clacking. I have foreseen it.

What’s going to make Xbox users so angry? The new dashboard will feature a new-looking layout, and will also feature Kinect-based voice and motion control integration—this will only affect Kinect owners, of course, and it means that to voice- or motion-browse your system you won’t have to go into a separate, Kinect-only portion of the dashboard. This is a good thing, I think…assuming that everything, you know, works.

The other big feature of the update is Xbox TV, which sees Microsoft partnered with almost 40 content providers around the world, allowing users to access content through their Xbox consoles rather than through cable boxes. At this point, it seems likely that most content will only be available to subscribers to Xbox LIVE Gold (which requires a yearly subscription fee) and users who already subscribe to cable or those content-providers, but I’m hoping that there are a few channels that’ll slip through the cracks, like the SyFy channel. Imma get my Merlin on.

WHAT.

Anyway, Microsoft sent out a press release with the details on what channels will be available to what regions, and when. Here they are, forthwith:

Dec. 6:

• EPIX. United States
• ESPN on Xbox LIVE (ESPN). United States
• Hulu. Japan
• Hulu Plus. United States
• LOVEFiLM. United Kingdom
• Netflix. Canada, United States
• Premium Play by (MediaSet). Italy
• Sky Go (SkyDE). Austria, Germany
• Telefónica España – Movistar Imagenio. Spain
• TODAY (MSNBC). United States

Later in December:

• 4 on Demand (C4). United Kingdom
• ABC iView (Australian Broadcasting Corp.). Australia
• AlloCiné. France (AlloCiné), Germany (Filmstarts), Spain (Sensacine), United Kingdom (Screenrush)
• Astral Media’s Disney XD (Astral Media). Canada
• blinkbox (Blinkbox). United Kingdom
• Crackle (Sony Pictures). Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States
• Dailymotion. Available in 32 countries globally
• Demand 5 (Five). United Kingdom
• DIGI+ (CANAL+). Spain
• GolTV (Mediapro). Spain
• iHeartRadio (Clear Channel). United States
• Mediathek/ZDF (ZDF). Germany
• MSN. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, United Kingdom
• MSNBC.com. United States
• MUZU.TV. Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom
• ninemsn. Australia
• Real Sports (Maple Leaf Sports). Canada
• Rogers On Demand Online (Rogers Media). Canada
• SBS ON DEMAND. Australia
• TMZ (Warner Bros.). Canada, United States
• TVE (RTVE.es). Spain
• UFC on Xbox LIVE (UFC). Canada, United States
• Verizon FiOS TV. United States
• VEVO. Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom, United States
• Vudu (Wal-Mart). United States
• YouTube. Available in 24 countries globally

Early 2012:

• Antena 3 (Antena 3 de Televisión). Spain
• BBC (BBC). United Kingdom
• CinemaNow (Best Buy). United States
• HBO GO (HBO). United States
• MLB.TV (MLB Advanced Media). Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States
• Telenovelas/Sports (Televisa). Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom
• Xfinity On Demand (Comcast). United States

So, like, we’ll see. But I know this for sure: you know how I said that angry internet commenters would be all mad? I should add my girlfriend to the list. Now I’m gonna have to show her how to get the stupid Xbox onto Netflix all over again. Sigh.

Here are some more screenshots of what the new Xbox Dashboard experience will look like IRL.

It’s official: after weeks of speculation and guesses, Microsoft published a press release early this morning to announce the December 6 launch date of the new Xbox 360 Dash Board. Is this the hugest news ever? NO. But it is kind of interesting, and it will usher in the new, Kinect-centric Xbox experience that we’ve been hearing about for the last few months.

According to the release, “the new dashboard is built from the ground up to take full advantage of voice control.” Since the Kinect’s introduction, controlling the system via the peripheral has been limited to certain applications and functions. The new update should make everything, uh, Kinected.

Sorry.

In addition, December 6 also marks the date that Microsoft will start to roll out their Xbox TV service, in which they’ve partnered with content providers in “more than 20 countries.”

But wait: there is, in fact, more. Xbox 360 users will also finally have access to Cloud Storage for game saves and their Xbox LIVE profiles (while the release doesn’t specify how much, we’ve heard reports that it should be 512 mb).

So that’s the whole thing. I’m also currently writing this while up in an airplane! Wow! Unfortunately, my plane is without Wi-Fi service, and as such, I’m writing this literally hours before I can post. So, from the past, hello, future! I’m very sleepy!

Today, Microsoft has offered some press details about their new push to promote the Kinect to the business world—officially going forward with plans for the gaming peripheral to be useful for non-gaming purposes. For the past year of the accessory’s existence, hackers and modders have found uses for the Kinect that are arguably more interesting than what Microsoft has done—which hasn’t amounted to much more than spotty games and controlling Netflix without exerting those extra calories to push buttons.

But now, taking a cue from pretty much EVERYONE, Microsoft is partnering up with businesses around the globe to see the development of new software and applications specific to those companies. For instance, in the above promotional video clip, you can see a surgeon going through charts with a flick of his hand while in the operating theater—echoing a real-life Kinect-mod that we reported on this summer.

Also of note in the above video: there’s a symphonic, strings-based version of the Pixies’ “Where is My Mind” playing in the background for some reason, officially making that video pretty much awesome in my book.

According to a post on Gamasutra today about the story, “over 200…companies in 25 programs have signed up for the program, [said] David Dennis, Microsoft Product Manager.” Some of the companies include Toyota, Razorfish, and Houghton Mifflin, says the post.

From David Dennis on the initiative:

“We’re putting development resources that understand this tech in the field and helping [these companies] build and fast track [their applications] to market. Microsoft doesn’t want to build, say, an education widget. Our goal is to build an ecosystem and a business platform to let our partners do that.”

If you direct your browser over to Microsoft’s official Kinect website, you can see different examples of other uses that the company is promoting, including therapy for stroke-victims and autistic children, as well as videos from other modders who help the disabled and make art with the device. It’s definitely worth checking out.

The reason that these kinds of things have me so excited is the fact that, while the Kinect may not be particularly good for gaming right now, it’s good for the world. It’s tagline when it was first released was that it makes you the controller, but what it didn’t say was that people were going to use it to game life itself. Suddenly, people everywhere are taking the Kinect and hacking reality, changing the way we interact with ideas—and that is way cooler than finding fancier ways to play Tetris.

Via Gamasutra

In continuing the tradition of the Microsoft Kinect being more useful for things that are not video games, Princeton University Ecology Professor Iain D. Couzin is using the Kinect to better track human and animal behavior.

Professor Couzin specializes in understanding swarm-behavior, making interesting discoveries regarding why locusts—God’s favorite plague-causing bug—get together in big, almost psychically connected, swarms.

The explanation, according to Couzin, isn’t quite as mystical. Mostly, they’re just trying to bite the shit out of each other.

The good professor explains:

“When locust populations become dense and resources become scarce, the locusts come together to fight it out over limited resources. They seem mostly to be limited by protein, salt, and water. Yet, they themselves are perfectly packaged sources of those exact nutrients. Really they’re making the best of a bad job. If they leave the swarm, they’re almost doomed to death because there are no other nutrients out there, or they’re very unlikely to find them. If they stay in the swarm, they risk being cannibalized. But, they also can gain the benefits of cannibalizing others.”

Neat.

Where does the Kinect come in? He’s using it in the lab to better model human and animal behavior in 3D space, basically what the Kinect does to help you learn yoga and stuff. While it doesn’t seem as though he’s made too many findings using the technology just yet, it just goes to show you that the peripheral is good for more than just pausing episodes of Star Trek when you have to take a leak and you can’t find the remote.

Also, there’s this locust swarming video game! It’s called Loopy Locusts, and it was created by a grad student at Princeton, presumably one of Couzin’s students. You, too, can swarm with the best of them—for each locust you munch, two more join the swarm. Make sure you loop along with the rest, or else you’ll get yourself eaten.

Locusts—truly nature’s wonder-bug. Also: bleh.

Via USC Santa Cruz

Everyone knows that the day after Thanksgiving is CRAZY SHOPPING DAY GROUND ZERO. After you’ve eaten your turkey and your stuffing, you roll out of bed at 3 in the morning the next day to make sure you get on line at Best Buy so you can get an iPad for fifty dollars less than usual.

But, hey, look, wait—Microsoft is fucking GIVING US SOMETHING FOR FREE on Black Friday. You don’t even have to LEAVE THE HOUSE to get it. Just boot up your Xbox 360 and BAM. If all goes as planned, that’s the day you’ll have your brand new Xbox LIVE dashboard, what with the somewhat dubious glories of the Xbox TV service, and the Bing searchability (Googlewhat?) and the Kinect control.

The date comes courtesy of a post on GigaOM, and while the news is anything but official, it wouldn’t be too surprising if this were a way to try and spur demand of the Microsoft Kinect all over again, which, if you’ll remember, was a big tech-hit last holiday when the peripheral launched. You may also have realized, in fact, that there’s kind of a dearth of truly good games for the thing, so the fact that Microsoft is making the Kinect the very center of its new multi-media amazingness push for the Xbox now isn’t out of left-field. I mean, what could make your home entertainment center more futuristic feeling than a TV that listens to your fuckin’ voice?!

So, yeah. Get ready for the official announcement to come soon…

Via GigaOM

France. Land of excellent cheeses, hot and cold running wine on tap, and cigarette-smoking while contemplating your various lovers. It is a land of much beauty, much danger, and also leaked footage of the forthcoming update to the Xbox Live Dashboard.

The dashboard will reportedly have deep integration with the Kinect peripheral, allowing it to be used alongside the controller, which would be a welcome change from the current set-up of the limited “Kinect Hub.” For those who don’t own the Kinect, the full Xbox Dashboard screen is navigable by controller, while the Kinect Hub is a separate navigation area with only a few features accessible. This new dashboard seems to solve that problem by allowing both methods of control.

It’s not clear how the footage got out, or why there’s no sound to go with it (so stop adjusting your speakers), but there it is.

It looks fine to me, personally. I’m sure it will take a day or two to get used to the new navigation scheme. But, in typical YouTube fashion, the video (which has 72 likes and 19 dislikes as of this writing) has a few choice comments deriding the update. I’ll leave it to you to pick out your favorites.

What do you think of the revisions? LET US KNOW IN OUR FUNCTIONAL COMMENTS SECTION, PLEASE!

The other day, at the Microsoft financial analyst meeting in Anaheim, the company’s CEO Steve Ballmer gave a presentation demonstrating the glory that is Xbox TV, which will supposedly offer television content to Xbox 360 owners (and probably Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers). What content? At what price?

We don’t know.

Fuck.

Anyway, apparently the new service will integrate the Xbox Kinect’s voice controls, which is really, really fun. I love yelling out, “Xbox Pause!” when I need to hit the can, rather than simply pushing a button. Which burns more calories—pushing the button, or yelling at your TV? I need a report on that.

According to a post on CNN, Ballmer explained how the Kinect works with Bing (of course it’s Bing) to search for content:

“Having all of that content is right on, it’s fantastic, but it brings a new challenge with it…Certainly we all know the frustrations of using guides and menus and controllers, and we think a better way to do all of this is simply to bring Bing and voice to Xbox. You say it, Xbox finds it.”

Ballmer said that Xbox TV will provide “news, sports, and your favorite channels,” and that Microsoft is partnering with “dozens or hundreds of additional video content suppliers.”

That’s not at all vague, no. Dozens. Or, you know, hundreds.

Again, there are no real concrete details as to how this will all work. The CNN article goes to David Wertheimer, the executive director of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California, who theorizes the model that Microsoft will be following with the service:

“Wertheimer believes that instead of trying to license content from providers like News Corp. (NWS), Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500), Disney (DIS, Fortune 500), and CBS (CBS, Fortune 500) themselves, Microsoft will instead use a ‘TV Everywhere’ model, in which existing cable and satellite subscribers will be able to access their content on the Xbox.”

And there’s the rub. Will this simply be an extra layer of cable service on top of service you already have? Is this nothing more than adding Kinect voice-search to your TV watching? Or will this provide content for users that they won’t already be able to get through cable? For instance, I have an internet connection through my city’s cable company, but I have no cable service. Because it’s Comcast, I have access to ESPN content through the Xbox, and I can watch Netflix and Hulu, but so far I haven’t been able to watch live coverage of pro-sports teams. I want my Jets football, God dammit! Will Xbox TV hook me up?

Guess we’ll find out this Christmas, when the service is supposedly going to launch.

Via CNN

Microsoft just made it a little tougher justifying not having a Kinect. Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, everyone’s favorite gaming-dad-guy announced yesterday that a code to download Child of Eden would join Kinect Adventures! (their exclamation point, not mine) in the Microsoft Kinect bundle. That means for $150, you’ll get two games along with your motion-sensing peripheral.

Hryb writes that the bundle “will start appearing in stores next week in all Xbox LIVE regions (except Japan since Child of Eden has not been released there). This bundle will be available in limited quantities and while supplies last so be sure to look for the special packaging above to make sure you’re getting Child of Eden!”

The Ubisoft title is one of those crazy music-acid-trip-shooter games, and it actually looks like it’d make pretty great use of the Kinect. And with titles like Twisted Pixel’s The Gunstringer and Capcom’s Steel Battalion on the way, more and more games are going to be taking good advantage of the gaming add-on.

Think of it kind of like the 3DS, but bigger, and for your TV. When it first came out, it was a neat toy that you couldn’t do a whole lot with. But as time goes on, it’s going to become a much more interesting and enjoyable gaming experience.

I have a feeling I’ll be a Kinect owner next week…

If you want to check out what playing Child of Eden might be like, take a gander at the trailer below:

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Via Major Nelson

Today, Joystiq reports a glimpse at an upcoming Walmart circular for the week of August 28 that advertises a discounted Xbox 360/Kinect bundle, coming in at the low-low price of $249.99, a $50 Rollback. Personally, I’d prefer to get a discounted Kinect (since I already have a damn Xbox). The console in the bundle is the 4gb “slim” Xbox 360, so this isn’t likely to get too many gamers excited. Still, not a bad entry price for some great hardware.

What’s interesting here is the fact that the PS3 has been discounted, and the Wii will be soon, but so far Microsoft has remained adamant about keeping their prices right where they are. As such, Joystiq looked into the matter by posing the question of the Walmart discount to Microsoft directly. Here’s the response:

“Walmart made an independent decision to implement this temporary price cut. We’ve made no announcements about price drops, and do not discuss our pricing plans in advance. Xbox is the number-one selling console in the U.S. for 13 of the past 14 months, and is showing record growth. With an incredible line-up of games and entertainment, we’re expecting the biggest year in Xbox history as the best-selling console worldwide.”

This situation, if it comes to fruition (and it looks pretty rock solid that it will) also echoes the big box retailer’s actions from a few weeks ago, when they cut the Nintendo 3DS’s price a few days early. This forced other retailers to do the same, thus causing a massive run on the system as gamers looked to cash in on the Ambassador’s Club’s 20 free games. Sadly, no such time-sensitive deal is in the offing for Xboxes, so this is likely just a case of Walmart looking to get some folks in the door by offering a pretty good deal.

What do you think? Will the Xbox 360 outsell the PS3 this year, now that Sony’s system has slashed its prices? My finally getting one of them is looking more tempting now than it’s ever been…

But as for the Kinect, I’m waiting for Steel Battalion to prove itself worthy before I get one. That game looks cool as shit.

Via Joystiq

Hug me.

The fun-loving family-friendly game Kinectimals will now be adding five bears to its cuddly-creature roster this Fall! OK, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit for writing that sentence. Anyway, there will be two ways for Kinect lovers to get the fuzzy animals: a retail re-release called Kinectimals Now with Bears! ($49.99) or DLC titled “Bear Island” ($14.99).

Those who get the pack will have five bears to choose from: Black Bear, Grizzly Bear, Cinnamon Bear, Glacier Bear or Polar Bear. What’s the difference between Glacier and Polar Bear? A new guide named Bumblina–sounds like an ignoramus–will help you and your bear explore a new uncharted island. You can search far and wide to get exciting new treasures and toys.

Great, that’s just what we need. Kids are stupid and impressionable these days. Soon we’ll have Nancy Grace and Bill O’Reilly cackling on about how little Timmy and Elizabeth saw a cute little black bear and went to go pet it only to have mother bear disembowel them while her cubs play with their decapitated heads. “This game Kinectimals is to blame!” Nancy Grace will yell in her obnoxious and cutting Southern drawl.

Then games will start getting banned across the country and the gamers will take to the streets and riot. The army will intervene with machine guns and gamers will get killed by the thousands. All of a sudden, the God Bear named HoneyTits will descend from the Golden Honey Heavens and say: “Stop this fighting because there has been too much bloodshed.” Then everyone will enjoy a nice honey popsicle. The End.

As the above video shows, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the Microsoft Kinect is turning out to be the most innovative and revolutionary gaming peripheral released in quite some time—just not for anything that Microsoft has actually done with the thing.

Grad students at Stanford University have used the Kinect to create a lightsaber-wielding robot, who fights students…very, very slowly.

Ken Oslund and Tim Jenkins, who seem to be the principal creators behind the robot, used the Kinect to track the human-opponent’s movements and position, which the robot could then interpret and respond to in its own attacks and defenses.

“It is swinging the sword at me with a series of pre-defined attack motions and when it detects hitting my sword like this, it will recoil and move to the beginning of the next attack motion,” says Oslund in the video.  “It can get off a swing and an attack once every two to three seconds, so you have to be on your toes and ready to block it.”

Jenkins goes into a bit of detail regarding how the Kinect fits into to the program they built for the robot:

“The first part of the problem is, of course, sensing where the person’s sword is.  You’ve got to know where it is if you’re going to block it with the robot, so we’re using a Microsoft Kinect to do the sensing.  It can detect points in 3D and that’s how we’re able to find where the sword is.”

The two explain that the human’s green-colored lightsaber is the key to the Kinect’s tracking system, in that it can pick the specific color out amid the background.

Now, watching this may not be too terribly exciting, seeing as how the robot and the people “duel” as though they’re fighting while underwater.  What is cool about this, though, is the proof of concept at work here.  If more development time is spent looking into physical ways the Kinect can interact with players, think of the awesome gaming possibilities this kind of stuff can provide.

Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?  That’s right—THE BEST REAL STEEL TIE-IN GAME EVAR.

Remember all those stories from a few years ago about how the Nintendo Wii was helping old people in nursing homes stay active?  This one blows those feel-good stories out of the water: a very cool innovation of Kinect’s motion tracking technology is being put to good use in Canadian operating rooms, and potentially across the globe.

At Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, engineers have teamed up with surgeons to create software that utilizes the Kinect in order to manipulate computer imaging.

“The surgeon makes simple and measured gestures in the air and can remain in the sterile field while directly adjusting CAT and CT scan views,” says Monica Matys, who narrates the above video demonstrating the new Kinect hack’s applications.

So what’s so important about that?  Every time a surgeon needs to consult imaging information during operations, there are two options: refer back to memory (which is obviously not always the most reliable choice) or to leave the operating room, consult images manually or via a computer keyboard.  That would require the surgeon to have to rescrub before coming back to continue the operation, adding more time to the surgery, and more potential risk to a patient’s procedure.  This Kinect hack would eliminate that problem.

“What the Xbox Kinect allowed us to do then is, with a wave of our hands, all of a sudden the computer now is with us, moving with us—the images are right in front of where we’re working,” says Dr. Calvin Law, a liver cancer surgeon at Sunnybrook.  “And we’re able now to bring that computer as if it was the last member of our team, right into the working field of the operating room.”  Dr. Law compared the development to having a GPS in your car—it’s just one more technological tool to help you get where you’re going.

The Sunnyview video says that the hack was developed by engineer Jamie Tremaine, along with an engineering colleague of his, and a friend who’s a general surgery student at Sunnyview.

“This is going to change the way we interact with our imaging in the operating room, potentially forever, because it has really given us a new way to work with the images while we’re operating without breaking sterility or obviously putting our patients at risk,” says Dr. Law.

This great development goes to show the innovative potential of Microsoft’s inexpensive hardware.  More than some other applications, for sure.

Via CBS News

Surely running no risk of overstating the importance or potential popularity of the upcoming Kinect, Microsoft Games Studios Corporate VP Phil Spencer positively gushed about the sales possibilities of the Kinect.

“We’ll have a huge launch portfolio, we want to sell more units than any console has ever sold in its first holiday, a new platform,” Spencer said. “Our retail partners are telling us, based on the consumer demand, ‘this is going to be the number one consumer electronics purchase this holiday. Not just in the games space, all of them.’”

Not overstatement enough for you? Spencer continues.

“So this, for us, is bigger than Xbox launch, bigger than 360 launch – this is a bigdeal for us. How many units are we going to sell? We’re completely goaled in investing as if this were the biggest console launch ever, and that’s our expectation.” Spencer said.

Then again, console add-ons have a history of performing poorly. When asked how the Kinect won’t end up like 32X, the Sega Genesis add-on, Spencer is confident they won’t share the same fate.

“It’s a long term commitment from us, it’s not an accessory. This is us adding to our platform, just the way we added live to the platform, and now it’s pervasive across everything we do, Kinect we expect to show up in exactly the same way,” Spencer said. “It will not be the 32X [laughs].”

[via Edge Online]

Microsoft’s Kinect has picked up five Japanese-developed titles, which amusingly will do a much better job selling the device to game enthusiasts than the company itself did at E3. The list boasts a lot of star power, including Suda 51 (No More Heroes) and Yukio Futatsugi (Panzer Dragoon, Phantom Dust). While there’s not a lot of information or media available for most of these titles yet, let’s get to listing!

codename D

Developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and Suda 51, codename D will plunge you into an evil amusement park, requiring you to use “devastating effects to destroy enemies and objects.”

Steel Battalion Heavy Armor

The product of a collaboration between Capcom and From Software, the game revisits the hardcore mech simulator that appeared on the original Xbox. The game takes place in 2082, in the city of Manhattan which has now become a battleground. In this setting, most advanced technology has been lost to years of war, and will put you in command of “vertical tanks.”

Haunt

NanaOn-Sha is developing this haunted house exploration game, in which you’ll “dodge traps and outwit ghosts, ghouls and frights that lurk with glee around each and every corner.”

Project Draco

Yukio Futatsugi, the man behind Panzer Dragoon, returns to his heritage – badass dragons blowing shit up. In Project Draco, you’ll raise and communicate with your dragon before taking it out to wreck some business.

Rise of Nightmares

This is perhaps the most vague game of them all. Coming from Sega, Rise of Nightmares will be a horror game… of some sort.

While there’s not a whole lot of info flying around about these titles yet, they already sound a damn sight better than Kinectimals.

[via Major Nelson's Blog]