This year was a huge year for Microsoft. The biggest thing that I was impressed with was Project Natal. Project Natal uses a camera that captures movement for the Xbox 360, but instead of using a controller like the Wii does, it captures the movement of the user's body. When you play a game, all you have to do is stand in front of the camera and move to play! You are the controller! You can check out a video of it here.
Another thing that Project Natal can do is interact with the user. One thing they had was what is being called "Milo". You can check out the video of it here. It boggles my mind how this can be done. There doesn't seem to be any lag between interaction with the user and "Milo". Also how you can "send" something into the game.
Some of the other things that Natal can do is voice and facial recognition. If your Xbox 360 is turned on and you walk into the room, the camera will see you and automatically log you into your Xbox Live account by using the facial recognition. If you want to see the commercial for Project Natal you can click here.
For those of you who are somewhat skeptic if this is real and that it works as well as it did in the videos, there have been several companies who have been able to test out Natal and they said that it worked just as well as it did in the demos at E3.
Microsoft also announced some new games for the Xbox 360. Some of these include The Beatles Rock Band, a new Tony Hawk game, and Left for Dead 2.
If you would like to watch that whole Press Conference for Microsoft, click here. I will warn you, it is almost 2 hours long, so if you have some free time, go ahead and watch it all. From that page, you can also watch the Nintendo & Sony Press Conferences.
Still think it's too gimmicky :P
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