Microsoft held their press conference on Monday June 14, the day before E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) started.
It was not what I hoped for. They startet with showing trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops, Gears of War 3, Metal Gear Solid: Rising, Halo: Reach and Fable III. And the rest of the show was for their Project Natal, no renamed Kinect.
Kinect is a new pherepial for Xbox 360 which will let you use your body as a controller. It have multiple sensors registrating your movements. It can be described as a cross between Wii and the EyeToy. What they showed, Nintendo did years ago. To me it’s almost the samething, but in a new wrapping. You don’t use a controller, but your body. Under you can se some of the demoes showed at the press conference.
Kinect Sports gives you bowling, ping-pong, track & field, boxing, volleyball and soccer. Very much like Wii Sport.
At last years E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) we got to know Project Natal. The new name is Kinect. Under you can se om videos with Kinect for Xbox 360 in action.
A Game Room will open sometimes in your Xbox 360 this year. It’s an arcade, like the one you have in Playstation’s Home. Here are some vidoes showing the new feature.
Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach from Microsoft held the opening keynote for CES 2010 (Consumer Electronics Show). Watch the whole keynote in the video bellow from Microsoft.com.
I assigned to the Xbox Live preview update for Xbox 360 and got into the first wave on October 22. Updated the Xbox with this falls big updates, which gives you Facebook, Twitter, Zune Video store and Last.FM (but only in US & UK) right on your Xbox 360. The update will go live for everyone sometimes in November. This is a preview release, so functions can changed or added I guess.
In the YouTube-video bellow, you can watch my recordings done with my Hauppauge HD-PVR. It was recorded at 1080i and downconverted to 720p before uploading it to YouTube.
Zune Video Store
Zune Video store is the greatest news for me. Up until now only US and 5-6 selected countries in Europe had the option to rent movies on Xbox 360. With this update, 18 countries (including Norway) have the advantage to rent online. And best of all, you can stream movies in 1080p (not every movie, but some).
As of now, 89 movies are available for streaming/downloading in Norway. Not a lot, but we had zero, so it’s a start. When this is update goes public, I guess we will have more movies. Of the 89 movies, 19 are in HD. SD movies are priced at 350 Microsoft points, and HD are 470. But this price will probably vary at bit if the movies are new or old. The 19 HD movies are: Absolute Power, Constantine, Eyes Wide Shut, The Fugitive, Full Metal Jacket, Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Prisnoer of Azkaban, The Last Samurai, The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Ocean’s Twelve, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Three Kings, Training Day, Troy – Director’s Cut, V for Vandetta.
I have a 12Mbit connection had watched Three Kings in HD. The quality was very good. When started, it buffered for a few seconds and played fine without any hickups for the whole movie. It was a great experience. I will definitivly rent more movies. Very easy, and the price is OK too.
Facebook
You can do almost everything with Facebook on the 360 as on the PC, almost. You can read news feeds, update your status, watch your pictures and your friends pictures. You can check whick of your Facebook friends who are on Xbox Live and vica versa. But there is no inbox. So you can read messages sendt to you.
Twitter
With Twitter you can see the 50 last tweets from the people you’re following. You can write your own tweets, do search and see trending topics. I works well, but it will take ages to type in those tweets with your controller, even if it’s only 140 letters. Now is the time to get that Messanger kit/chatpad (check Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Play-Asia.com), it makes it much easier to type.
Last.FM
I haven’t tested Last.FM since that service is only available in US and UK. But it lets you stream music on the Xbox 360. I used my US account the get the picture.
Conclusion
I’ve only been testing it for a couple of days, and it looks promising. It’s cool to have Facebook and Twitter on Xbox 360, but I can’t see that I will use it on a regualar basis. Both Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM can be used when you’re in the Dashboard. It cannot be used ingame. And for now, Last.FM is for the US and UK only.
The feature I will be using most is the Zune video store. For the first time, people in Norway and 11 other countries (18 in total) can enjoy movie rental on Xbox 360. Streaming movies at 1080p work very well. I have a 12Mbit connection and would like to hear from you with lower bandwidth and how it worked for you.
I’ve been watching most of the The History of Microsoft episodes. It’s very interesting to watch, but the series is now come to an end. The year is 1999.
1999 was the year Internet Explorer 5.0 got released. It’s amazing that it took a whole 10 year to get to version 8 of IE. We got Office 2000, which I still use and it works perfect for my needs. We also got Windows 98 Second Edition, I still have an old computer running on it. ’99 was also the year of The Matrix, one of the best movies ever made. It was also the first movie I bought on DVD.
If you haven’t watch all the episodes of The History of Microsoft, go to channel9.msdn.com and download them, it’s well worth a look.
