It’s officially too expensive for my liking.

$149.99 could net you the Kinect camera and the Kinect Adventures game.

On top of confirming Kinect pricing, Microsoft have also stamped their official seal on the new Xbox 360 Arcade unit which will feature 4 GB of internal storage and a black matte finish. Wi-Fi? Included. Which means the only thing this doesn’t feature is beefy storage which I’m not sure you can rectify with official (or unofficial) hard drives yet.

Microsoft also confirmed the existence of a new Holiday bundle which will have both the Kinect and new Arcade unit for $299.99. That’s not a bad price, to be honest. Hell, I may even partake in a bundle like that if Microsoft allowed me to use my own 2.5 inch hard drive.

We all know that won’t happen though.

A thread title from NeoGAF. Gowans007 goes on to elaborate a bit,

“Is the console gaming audience tastes becoming more in line from what we traditionally expected from a PC gamer audience?”.

My answer was as follows:

For a long time I viewed myself as gamer who enjoyed specific types of games on specific platforms. But, at the start of this generation, there was a huge shift from (what was considered) “PC styled gaming” on PCs to “PC styled” gaming on consoles. I followed the developers to the consoles thanks to efforts like Gears of War. At the time, my newly built computer wasn’t getting any of that Epic Games love. I was wondering why and then I took a look at the console hardware. They’ve finally broken the HD barrier and improved online functionality — two key components which made PC gaming very attractive to me were now on consoles as well.

(But despite the transition, I still value dedicated servers, not paying for peer-to-peer gaming and old PC gaming model of substantial free DLC.)

Five years later and I’ve finally upgraded my PC thanks to lower hardware costs and the abundance of competent multiplatform games. I upgraded it to play more “console games” on it; not “PC games” specifically. Borderlands, Burnout: Paradise or just about any other multiplatform game must support the Xbox 360 controller. In a way, I’ve turned my PC to a more powerful Xbox 360. (I’ve also upgraded for Civ V and — to a lesser degree — Starcraft II)

I don’t see it as a shift from PC gamers to console gamers or vice versa. I see it as platforms becoming more accomodating to people’s tastes. The Xbox 360 and PS3 were able to accomodate what PC developers were accustomed to making which in turn enabled more people to play what they like to play on consoles. They had to make sacrifices such as controller preference and cutting edge tech, but that’s a personal preference.

A lot of this overlapping is thanks to Microsoft’s efforts (easy porting, DirectX, GFW standards on PC etc..). They haven’t done enough, but they have put in a fair bit of effort to ensure games are available on the PC and console side of things.

I kinda trailed away from the initial question a bit, but I still believe that consoles have simply become more appealing to more gamers thanks to the advances they’ve made.

I’d like to give kudos to Youtube & IGN for their youtube.com/e3 channel. Every press conference (except Konami’s) was streamed live for all to see. It was smooth, the quality was great and it was convenient.

Now that the show is over, here are some thoughts on the big three’s press conferences and some personal highlight games of the show.

Microsoft

Presentation: D-
Content: C+

This was a very disappointing press conference. Black Ops, Halo: Reach, Gears of War 3 and Metal Gear Solid: Rising were the high points and then it went all downhill from there. Kinect did not excite me whatsoever. In fact,  it was incredibly awkward and difficult to stomach with all the pseudo enthusiasm and forced banter.

Revealing the new hardware revision was nice, but giving away free hardware at the end of the show after all that Kinect mumbo jumbo was just lame.

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Announcements

• Kinect launching Nov 4, 2010 with over 15 launch games. No official pricing at this time.
• Microsoft working with Crytek on a new exclusive called Codename: Kingdoms; no details aside from live action trailer of burly men walking about with weapons
• Dead Space 2 launches Jan 25, 2011
• Medal of Honor Beta starts Jun 21, 2010 on PC, PS3, Xbox 360

Xbox 360 Slim

Available in-store as early as this week for $299.99.

All the info you need can be found in this handy FAQ sheet:

Glamour shots below:

I’m missing a fair bit of Kinect news/announcements, but I don’t think anyone would mind. To be frank, Microsoft’s E3 2010 press conference was embarrassing to watch with their fake banter and enthusiasm for Kinetic. The difference in presentation prowess became evident when Electronic Arts’ press conference rolled which I thought was great.

The new slimmer Xbox 360 is a welcome change. It looks much better than those early leaks yesterday. I appreciate the built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi, 250 GB hard drive and the overall slimmer design, but I wish they shoved that PSU into the box as well. It just makes it easier to disconnect, transport and reconnect.

It wasn’t too crazy of an E3 Day 0 in terms of news or announcements, but there were lots of notable trailers which I’ve highlighted below including “Child of Eden” which may be the reason for me to get a Kinect or Move. (I’m a fan of Rez and Lumines!)

Enjoy!

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Announcements

Insomniac Games joins the EA Partners Program (via Ted Price video & blog)

• New IP with EA Partners program
• Will have complete control and own the IP
• Will continue to work with Sony with the Resistance & Ratchet & Clank franchise
• Will invest more time polishing up their games in the future

Intel officially axes their discrete GPU, Larrabee (via Anandtech)

Robbie Bach & J Allard leaving Microsoft (via Engadget)

Steve Jobs to keynote WWDC 2010 (via Engadget)

—

Congratulations to Insomniac Games on their new publishing deal with EA. But that’s not the piece of news which I was pleased to hear. I’m excited about the prospects of their games getting more development time. A Crack in Time was their last game under the old “one game per year” way of developing games and that was excellent. Just imagine what more time could yield?

Intel axing their Larrabee GPU wasn’t that big of a surprise. They’re promising to continue work on their integrated graphics processors which I think is a great idea — especially when you consider their work with the Atom platform.

So the remaining “fathers of the Xbox” are leaving Microsoft. It’s been such a long time since both Mr. Bach and Mr. Allard were part of the core Xbox team, so I doubt this will impact things very much on that front. It’s still a bit sad to see them leave the company after contributing so much.

The “Valhalla” motherboard leak is actually a few days old, but it’s still worth talking about for those who are looking forward to a potential Xbox 360. Aside from the obvious physical motherboard size reduction, the most significant change seems to be the one package GPU and CPU chip. These reductions will obviously help Microsoft’s bottom line, but it could also mean price cuts for consumers as well.

Following the “360 slim” rumor comes a presentation slide indicating Microsoft’s plans to include USB storage support in their upcoming Spring 2010 Dashboard system update. According to the slide, we’ll be able to use our own reasonably priced USB storage devices and store up to 16GB of Xbox 360 related data.

To both rumors, all I have to say is: Finally!

What’s X10? It’s Microsoft’s Xbox 360 media event for 2010 and boy were there announcements made there. I’ve taken the liberty of gathering all the fun and placed it all in one post.

Announcements

• Xbox 360 Final Fantasy XIII Special Edition bundle will be available on March 9 for $399.99 USD
  • Includes a 250GB Hard Drive, two wireless controllers, exclusive Xbox avatar items and a standard copy of the game
• Perfect Dark XBLA & Game Room will launch in March
• Splinter Cell: Conviction debuting April 13
• Alan Wake debuting May 18 exclusively for Xbox 360 (trailer below)
• Lost Planet 2 debuting May 18 as well
• Dead Rising 2 debuting August 31
  • Xbox Live! exclusive Dead Rising: CASE ZERO is a prologue to Dead Rising 2 and will be available prior to Dead Rising 2 launch
• Left 4 Dead 2: The Passing DLC coming to Xbox 360 and PC
• Fable III will debut holiday 2010
• Crackdown 2 debuting later this year
• Halo: Reach multiplayer beta starts May 3 and will be accessible via Halo 3: ODST disc

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