E3 2011: The Microsoft press conference - Everything you need to know

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Forget the guff, forget the fluff. Here's what really matters

  • Next up, a trailer for Forza 4. Very shiny, very sexy. Used the word "epic" a lot. 16-player online and Kinect head-tracking and voice commands.
  • Peter Molyneux introduced Fable: The journey. Typically gorgeous CG trailer segued into - can you guess!? - an on-rails Kinect shooter! Set on a horse cart! We screamed. We cried. Cundy ranghis special new bell.
  • Minecraft was announced as a winter release. Guess how it can be controlled. Clue: Begins with a "K"...
  • Next up, Kinect Disneyland Adventures. Faithful recreation of the theme park. Bad child actor time again, as E3 2011 got its Skittles moment, with two kids babbling unconvincingly through a demo of a flight game based on the Peter Pan's Flight ride. Then an on-rails Monkeyball based on Alice in Wonderland. They ended with a "Fistbuuuump!". And a meme was no doubt born. And followed by another, in the form of...
  • The Star Wars Kinect demo. Flailing. Arm waving. Shouts of "Lightsaber ON!" Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new Star Wars Kid.

  • Double-Fine's Tim Schafer followed with a demo of Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster. Seemed to be a simple, gesture-driven family game, and actually pretty damn endearing in its presentation at times, as you'd expect from Double-Fine. Schafer got extra points for his instruction to "Unleash the simulated family!" upon introducing the demo actors.
  • Kinect Fun Labs was announced by Kudo Tsunoda. Seems to be a bank of new tools for use with Kinect. First up, we were shown that you can now map a more realistic (but still cartoony) version of your face to your avator using the Kinect camera. After that? Finger tracking, which opens up a whole world of possibilities for drawing 3D sparklers in the virtual air. But there was even more! Object capture will let us scan in real objects, which will then be modelled in-game. We were asked to "imagine the possibilities". We tried.
  • But we don't need to. Kinect Fun Labs is live today.

  • Following that, we got Kinect Sports: Season Two. It's Kinect Sports. With new Sports. And new gestures. Apparently "playing sports in video games is now more realistic than ever". Which would be true, if real sports consisted of stilted-yet-hilarious body gestures translating into laggy inputs. The guys demoing the American Football mode are now also destined for memedom.
  • Dance Central 2 was demoed. It has multi-dancer action now. By this point we had intense sobbing action.
  • Don Mattrick returned to recap all that we had just seen. And announce that Modern Warfare 3's DLC would get another timed exclusive on Xbox 360. And introduce Halo 4, which will be the first part of a whole new trilogy. The trailer showed Master Chief being pulled out of Cryosleep by Cortana, only to find himself escaping froman exploding ship. Making his way outside he was confronted with a frigging huge vessel. Halo 4 is coming at Christmas 2012.

So there you go. That's Microsoft for this year. Your thoughts? And how does this make you feel about Sony and Nintendo's conferences?

June 06, 2011

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David Houghton
David Houghton
Former GamesRadar+ Features Writer

Former (and long-time) GamesRadar+ writer, Dave has been gaming with immense dedication ever since he failed dismally at some '80s arcade racer on a childhood day at the seaside (due to being too small to reach the controls without help). These days he's an enigmatic blend of beard-stroking narrative discussion and hard-hitting Psycho Crushers.