#tgs2011
We've got a guy who speaks Japanese and one who speaks Australian tearing through Tokyo Game Show, eyeballing Hideo Kojima, playing the prettiest PlayStation 3 game they've ever seen, and soaking in all the news from Tokyo Game Show 2011. More »
We haven't had our own hands-on with Grasshopper's upcoming Kinect throw-em-up Diabolical Pitch just yet, but that didn't stop us from grabbing some shaky-cam footage of the first trailer and that of someone giving the game a whirl at the developer's pre-TGS shindig.
Check out the trailer above. A gameplay demo is all wound up after the break.
#diabolicalpitch
Wii Sports was a mirage. At first glance it seemed the perfect sports game, all action and technique, no button-mashing. A few hours in, though, and you saw it for what it was: incredibly primitive motion control that let you essentially cheat your way to victory by flicking your wrists instead of hurling your body. More »
During a pre-TGS event, "video game band" Grasshopper Manufacture unveiled Diabolical Pitch, the Kinect title first announced last year as "Codename D." And it is absolutely a game about a baseball player pitching and batting balls at oncoming monsters.
Two players are shown at once lobbing baseballs, lifting one another up for health support, and even joining hands in a DBZ-like "fusion" pose for a special attack, against what looked like a vaguely disco-esque baseball field.
#grasshoppermanufacture
Diabolical Pitch is an upcoming Kinect game from Grasshopper Manufacture, the studio responsible for titles like No More Heroes. More »
During a pre-TGS event, "video game band" Grasshopper Manufacture unveiled Diabolical Pitch, the Kinect title first announced last year as "Codename D." And it is absolutely a game about a baseball player pitching and batting balls at oncoming monsters.
Two players are shown at once lobbing baseballs, lifting one another up for health support, and even joining hands in a DBZ-like "fusion" pose for a special attack, against what looked like a vaguely disco-esque baseball field.
#kinect
Because of the way its camera depicts what it sees, Kinect is being used by researchers to monitor elderly patients for their risk of a fall while still respecting their privacy. The device is helping the University of Missouri's independent living community predict health risks 10 to 14 days before their most serious symptoms manifest. More »
We're going to be frank and completely honest right now: The idea of being elderly and living alone is horrifying. We're barely functional as human beings now, and we're in the prime of our lives! What happens when we can't figure out the new-fangled DVRs of the future? What happens when we put the microwave in the oven? What if we develop a new illness, and no one is around to notice?
We're probably on our own with the DVR and the microwave, but a group of researchers at Missouri University are looking to use Microsoft's Kinect as a solution for that last problem. The idea is fairly straight forward: Kinect units are placed around an elderly person's home and are used to analyze their walking patterns and movement behavior, which often times indicate trouble ahead of other, more noticeable symptoms.
The theory has been tested at TigerPlace, an independent living facility for Missouri's elderly, where researchers were able to spot trouble ten to fourteen days faster than normal. It all seems rather big-brother-ish at first, but we're willing to do anything to make being old less terrifying.
In order to ensure mankind's future as the dominant super-race on this planet, we must activate our youth through education -- and video games.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell has been testing education software for years and says he has created a method of teaching a full high school career in less than a year, using, in large part, cloud systems. "In cloud gaming you disconnect the system's administration from the computer to the cloud," Bushnell told GamesIndustry.biz. "It's going to be an important step for allowing technology into the classroom." Bushnell says his program teaches students 10 times faster than traditional methods, and his shortened high-school-span plan could be ready for implementation by the end of 2011.
Not to be outdone, the Kinect-based education-resource blog KinectEDucation advocates using Kinect to augment learning environments, and is currently holding its Kinect in Education Contest, challenging hackers to create Kinect apps for use in classrooms. Two $500 prizes will be awarded, one for the most innovative and adaptable classroom software, and one for the "best" in-class video showcasing a Kinect classroom experience. The contest runs now through November 30.
#bigleaguesports
Why worry about which sports game to play on your Xbox 360 when you can get baseball, hockey, basketball, golf, football, and other football, all in one handy Kinect game? More »
With Hulu Plus, Netflix and Zune on the Xbox 360, now more than ever the console is becoming a bastion for those looking to digest video content. During a preview of the upcoming Fall Dashboard update for Xbox Live, I spoke with senior product manager of Xbox Live entertainment, Terry Farrell, and asked him for some hard data.
"42 percent of Xbox Live Gold members in the U.S. are watching an average of an hour of television and movies on their Xbox, every single day," Farrell said. Each month, that adds up to "more than 30 hours of digitally distributed television and movies." Farrell also revealed that over the last year, Xbox Live has seen three times the use of video content on the Xbox 360 console, spread across Netflix, Hulu Plus and Microsoft's Zune rental service.
With the new Fall Dashboard update, Microsoft is looking to make it easier to present this video content, both through use of Bing search (which works via the controller and Kinect) and what the company hopes is a more intuitive and navigable user interface. Also, YouTube.
#culturesmash
Being a child of the 1980s, action figures were a part of growing up. Posing them was intuitive and second nature. Kids today still play with action figures, but with increasingly better video games, action figures today are also digital. More »
#rapala
When your trailer depicts a young man delivering a furious rain of punches down upon a potential seafood platter and the words "Incredibly Fun Fish Battles" your marketing is pretty much complete. More »
#kinect
This impromptu little piece of street performance involves a large building, Kinect, the cover of darkness, a copy of classic arcade game Breakout and some very interested bystanders. More »
#riseofnightmares
Rise of Nightmares will get your blood pumping, even if it is just from standing up and going through the motions of killing virtual enemies. More »
Forgoing the usual AAA disc release, Criterion decided the next entry in its Burnout franchise would be a downloadable title featuring Kinect integration. My initial preview of Burnout Crash!, following its unveiling at EA's summer showcase, focused on how the main modes and how gameplay works.
The game has come a long way just over a month later -- as it should have, since it's kinda launching soon. My experience with the Kinect Party mode and Autolog earlier this week showed me that Burnout Crash! stands out as a fun party game.
Fashion gets fun in a new ad from Lanvin, featuring the song "I Know You Want Me" by Pitbull and uncredited choreography that should be familiar to anyone who has played Dance Central. We wanted to make sure we weren't seeing things, so we checked with Harmonix to find out if they recognized the choreo.
"It appears to be a combo of moves from a few songs off Dance Central, so they must have had the models bustin' for a while," Harmonix's communications director John Drake told Joystiq. "It's pretty clear that everyone wants to play multiplayer in Dance Central 2, whether you're wearing sweat pants or couture fashion. Though you might work up quite a sweat doing full body choreography in the fall line."
Considering buying a Kinect for the express purpose of entering the techno-organic wonderland of Child of Eden? Microsoft has just made that process about $50 easier, by bundling a download code for the game with specially marked Kinect sensors. According to Major Nelson, the new bundle will be priced identically to the current $150 Kinect package, will still include Kinect Adventures, and will be released in "limited quantities." You can get it in any region except Japan, because Child of Eden has yet to be released there.
From a consumer perspective, this is a fantastic deal, allowing easy and cheap access to what is most certainly the best Kinect game. From Microsoft's perspective, it seems a bit weird to use a game that didn't exactly light up retail as an incentive. Maybe it realized that more people need to play this.
Even though there's already a Twister game included in Family Game Night 3 -- and even though the only equipment you need for Twister is, essentially, a table cloth -- Majesco has announced plans to release its own take on the classic game of humiliating entanglements this November.
The, yes, twist here is that unlike the previous version (which reimagined Twister as a rhythm game), this Twister game uses the Kinect sensor to allow you to gesticulate and pretzel yourself up for real. It'll include 16 different modes, including one that has players dodging shapes for some reason.
#twister
In the old days, playing Twister involved a group of (hopefully drunk) friends of mixed sex, a plastic play mat, and a spinner. In November, thanks to the video game magicians at Majesco, all you'll need it a $200 to $300 video game console, a $150 add-on, and a $50 video game. More »
So Harmonix announced a bunch of new Dance Central 2 tracks at PAX last week. Make no mistake, these are all one hundred percent club bangers, from "What is Love" to "Baby Got Back." The cream of the crop, though, has to be "The Humpty Dance" by Digital Underground.
Why you'd ever need another song is beyond us. Frankly, we can't wait to try out the required dance moves, including "limp to the side like your legs was broken" and "get busy in a Burger King bathroom." See all the new tracks after the break.
It turns out that Walmart's "rollback" of the Xbox 360 4GB Kinect bundle, dropping it to $249 ($50 off its current price), was an error. A notice posted by Walmart acknowledges "the price was mistakenly labeled as a rollback," a term the retailer uses for permanent price drops.
The silver lining here is that Walmart will honor the $249 price at retail until Monday, September 5, or while supplies last. There will be no rainchecks on the offer.
Microsoft informed us last week that it does not discuss pricing plans in advance, but that "Walmart made an independent decision to implement this temporary price cut."
John Gaeta, the Academy-Award-winning visual effects supervisor behind the Matrix trilogy, founded entertainment-development company Float Hybrid in 2009, and now he's ready to plug us in. Float is working on a series of Kinect- and mobile-controlled sandbox games, many of which can now be previewed on its YouTube channel. Float is experimenting with real-time, 3D video capture, Kinect-powered sound games and mobile-device-controlled console games. One title, Infiltrator, uses both -- one person on iPad and one on Kinect -- to play a versus round.
Float's projects are in the pre-alpha stage, but their potential for innovation already looks intense. Intense. Whoa, did anyone else just get deja-vu? Oh, no...
The upcoming Walmart circular reveals that the mega-retailer will do a "rollback" on the price of the Xbox 360 4GB Kinect bundle, dropping it to $249 (down $50 from the current price). The flyer we were provided was for the week beginning August 28.
The timing of the price cut could be a reaction to Sony's recent PS3 price snip. Microsoft recently stated it wasn't feeling any pressure to reduce the price of the Xbox 360 in Europe. Meanwhile, in America, the system has performed consistently well in the later years of its life.
#kinectsports
This coming weekend, Stephen, Joel and I are going to be heading to Seattle for PAX—we'll be fighting our way around the show floor, taking pictures of as much crazy stuff as possible, playing a whole lot of upcoming games, including... well, including baseball. More »
#kinect
The Microsoft engineers building Kinect "knew this thing was going to be viewed as a toy," says one, "and so it was going to be abused." So they abused it first, toughening the thing up to the point it could be dropped on concrete and still function. More »
During floor demos at Gamescom, Microsoft revealed the moniker of its new, Kinect-centric Xbox 360 Dashboard: "Twist Control." We think we can all agree that this is the best name that the platform's navigation tools have had thus far. Well, okay, "Blades" might give it a run for its money, but it'd be a pretty close race.
Then again, we haven't seen much twisting from the interface -- isn't there a more context appropriate title out there? Something like "Space Windows" or "Wizard Buttons" or "The Telekinesis Engine" or "Intangible Frames" or "The Even Newer Xbox Experience" or "Minority Report" or "Bark Commands at Your Xbox Until Your Neighbors Think That You Are a Legit Crazy Person."
Dance Central players are well versed in the rote song selection of the original game, but Dance Central 2 will allow those who can't stop movin' to keep on keepin' on with playlists. Players can now chain multiple songs together to avoid being dumped into the song selection menu after every routine.
"20 is the current cap," Harmonix's John Drake told us at Gamescom. "But this isn't the final build." He showed us the menu, which featured six customizable tracks (again, not final) and playlists that are "high tempo" or an "easy start." Another nice detail is that the total time required to complete the set updates itself as you add tracks. The transitions between songs are less than 20 seconds, and if you aren't in the mood for a specific track in the list it can be skipped.
We also checked out the game's new voice commands and "Break It Down" training mode. Voice selection is fully compatible in song selection (for both DC1 and DC2 tracks) and main menu. Drake demonstrated this by calling out several of the game's tracks.
"Break It Down," the mode that teaches the routines, has experienced a significant upgrade. Players can now select specific portions of a song to practice, skip certain sections they know better, slow down to learn specific moves and then speed it up again when they think they've got it. And for those who feel they are definitely hitting a move right, despite what the game says, the Kinect can now record and play back a section to show exactly what's going wrong.
