Kinect Sports Rivals' twisted take on motion-controlled athletic competition drops April 8 in North America, Australia and New Zealand, April 11 in Europe. Help its colorful characters triumph at climbing, wake racing, target shooting, soccer, tennis and bowling in lovely 1080p. Read more...
Microsoft has revealed a distressed Union Jack Xbox bundle for the United Kingdom, featuring a flag-wrapped 4GB console, controller and Kinect. The bundle also includes Kinect Adventures and Kinect Sports, along with three months of Xbox Live gold membership. It marches to retail on May 25 for £249.99.
Don't live in the UK and still want to get your Union Jack on? Well, turns out GelaSkins has a similar (and prettier) Xbox wrapping available for $30. There's also the Stars and Stripes package for those who feel offended by all this non-Amurikan talk.
Did you somehow end up with a white HDTV? If so, you can finally get a Kinect unit to match, as part of Microsoft's new "Xbox 360 Special Edition 4GB Kinect Family Bundle" (whew.) The bundle includes a 4GB 360, the white Kinect from the long-delayed Star Wars bundle, a white controller, copies of Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures, and three months of Live for $300.
A "special edition" white Xbox 360 controller will also be available separately for $49.99. It appears to be glossy white. Note that this "special edition" controller has the normal d-pad, and not the improved version.
The bundle (and the controller) are shipping today worldwide -- except for Europe and Brazil, where Microsoft says they will be released "in the next few months."
#impressions
"Xbox," I say, "Streak 20," and the huddle breaks. My quarterback trots up to the line. I instinctively half-squat and reach out my hands, placing them under the giant rear end of an invisible lineman. "Hike!" More »
According to the NPD group, the Xbox 360 sold 297,000 units in North America for the month of April. Microsoft announced this afternoon that sales for the Xbox 360 increased by 60 percent from the same month in 2010.
Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Chief Aaron Greenberg stated via Twitter th...
Amazon is currently offering two select Kinect titles for a combined price of $60. By "select," we mean precisely seven choices. Your best bet is probably Kinect Sports and ... Michael Jackson, maybe? Both the savings and the momentous choice are yours for the taking.
#xboxlivemarxismplace
Hey Europe, this weekend, the class system that normally divides Xbox Live between paying and non-paying subscribers is being torn down. More »
Even if you've never joined the prodigious ranks of the Xbox Live Gold subscribers, or whether you've simply allowed your honorable title to fall by the wayside, you can get a temporary pass to the Gold Zone this weekend. From today through Monday, free users will find their status upgraded, giving them access to the online multiplayer functionality usually reserved for their premium counterparts.
Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch -- Microsoft is asking that folks participating in the freekend help break an extremely specific Guinness world record using Kinect Sports: "The most people running a virtual 100m dash at one time." That ... that can't be a very large number to beat, can it? Regardless, if you'd like to participate (and grab a free Avatar shirt at the same time), check out the details on Rare's blog.
New DLC for Kinect Sports, coming April 29, will add a new mode called "Calorie Challenge." This, of course, uses the Kinect sensor to scan every Twinkie, Monte Cristo sandwich, and bowl of melted butter you eat, keeping a running tally of exactly how many calories you consume within a time limit.
Okay, we're kidding.
The Calorie Challenge is actually a mode in which you face off against anthropomorphized snack foods in a series of challenges, with the goal to burn off as many calories as that food typically contains. You'll compete against "Peppy Pizza" to burn off 302 calories, for example, while Steady Celery will provide seconds of competition with 25 calories.
A Guinness World Records achievement for "most people running a virtual 100m dash at one time" will take place over Easter weekend, on April 23. According to Rare, a free Xbox Nations gamer pic should be available in the coming week. Downloading it will "automatically enter you into the record attempt."
Then, at the appointed time (listed after the break), all you need to do is pop in Kinect Sports and "complete a sprint mini-game while connected to Xbox Live." Make sure not to choose the entire track and field event from the menu or it won't count.
All who download the gamer pic and participate in the record attempt will be rewarded with the Guinness World Records avatar tee (pictured). Beyond that point, you can totally make up the reason you earned it: "Yeah, I totally got that for putting four pool balls in my mouth. You should see how many you can do!"
#whoops
In Sweden, a team of cops stormed a couple's home after a neighbor reported that five people were beating the crap out of a woman. Turns out they were all playing boxing on Kinect Sports. More »
Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg has called Kinect launch titles Dance Central and Kinect Sports "breakout hits" for the publisher, announcing that each has accounted for one million units in US sales. Globally, the Kinect device has already achieved 8 million sold.
During Kinect's November launch month, Dance Central just missed making the top ten in US game sales for the month and was trailed by the Rare-developed Kinect Sports and Ubisoft's Your Shape: Fitness Evolved among the bestselling Kinect titles. Harmonix's dance game also just missed landing among our top ten games of 2010.
Xbox 360 had a good year. It could've been exclusive hits like Halo Reach, which landed in the No. 3 spot on the top selling games of 2010, according to NPD. Or it could've been the Xbox 360 S console refresh which, since its unveiling at E3 last June, has remained on top of the monthly home console sales numbers for an impressive six months straight. Or maybe it was the Kinect, which shipped a whopping eight million units by the end of the year, and sold well over its five million unit goal.
In actuality, it was all three, and Xbox's David Dennis was making the media rounds tonight to talk about it. "We're super pleased with the response we saw," Dennis said, "and we're just working hard to get supply back on the shelves and keep January and February on track as well." During the second half of the December, Dennis said Microsoft resorted to air shipping consoles in to meet customer demand.
"For us, the focus was trying to get as much on the shelves before that last push before Christmas. It's not cheap to do things like that but we've got a bunch of really smart MBAs to figure out the right balance when to shift back to our traditional process." That traditional process is the far more affordable, but far slower, ocean-based freight. It's not like there aren't any more Xboxes to go around, retailers will simply have "fewer than [they] normally would have."
Xbox 360 had a good year. It could've been exclusive hits like Halo Reach, which landed in the No. 3 spot on the top selling games of 2010, according to NPD. Or it could've been the Xbox 360 S console refresh which, since its unveiling at E3 last June, has remained on top of the monthly home console sales numbers for an impressive six months straight. Or maybe it was the Kinect, which shipped a whopping eight million units by the end of the year, and sold well over its five million unit goal.
In actuality, it was all three, and Xbox's David Dennis was making the media rounds tonight to talk about it. "We're super pleased with the response we saw," Dennis said, "and we're just working hard to get supply back on the shelves and keep January and February on track as well." During the second half of the December, Dennis said Microsoft resorted to air shipping consoles in to meet customer demand. "For us, the focus was trying to get as much on the shelves before that last push before Christmas. It's not cheap to do things like that but we've got a bunch of really smart MBAs to figure out the right balance when to shift back to our traditional process." That traditional process is the far more affordable, but far slower, ocean-based freight. It's not like there aren't any more Xboxes to go around, retailers will simply have "fewer than [they] normally would have."
Hey, UK-based readers: Do you feel like totally humiliating yourselves? You should look into Microsoft's "Game with Fame" competition, in which one lucky, Kinect Sports-playing family will compete in virtual track and field events against actual Olympians Linford Christie and Mark Lewis-Francis.
If you'd like to freshen up your Kinect Sports experience with fresh fruit and fresh ... chicken, head to the Xbox Live Marketplace right now. Microsoft has posted a free DLC suite, the "Party Pack."
The free download adds a "Challenge" feature to track friends' minigame scores. Appropriately, the DLC adds six new minigames: Super Striker (for Soccer), Pinvaders (for Bowling), Rapid Runner (for Track & Field), Target Smash (for Table Tennis), Fruit Splatter (for Volleyball), and King of the Ring (for Boxing). It also includes new games for the multiplayer Party Play mode, and three new "crazy" Party Play mascots: "Zippy Zombie" (okay, so maybe it's not all fresh), Champion Chicken, and Sportastico. Check after the break for descriptions of the minigames.
MS also announced that new DLC will arrive for Kinect Joy Ride on January 4. The "Chevrolet Car Pack" adds the Camaro, Corvette, and Cruze to your game. It's free -- all you'll have to do is ... select a Chevy ad in XBLM.
#facebook
Rare has built and launched a Kinect Sports application for Facebook, which will keep track of players' league results, allow them to issue invitations and be invited to others, and collect video highlights in a single place. More »
Giving out Kinect to a studio audience just seems like the classy thing to do these days. Oprah did it, and now Jimmy Fallon is doing it too. Last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, after demoing Kinect Sports and Dance Central with Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda and Harmonix's Naoko Takamoto, the affable host announced that everyone in the audience would be leaving with an Xbox 360 Kinect bundle.
We're happy for the audience, but the event was overshadowed by another occurrence. It was something rarely seen on the mortal plane, something more precious than a unicorn: Kudo wasn't wearing sunglasses. Jimmy and Kudo actually discussed the missing eyewear before staring their play session, and it turns out he took off the shades for his mother. Say it with us: Awwwwwww.
You don't have to tell Mark Wahlberg how to have a good time. The man is well versed in pleasant recreational activities, which made him the perfect candidate for a new program from Microsoft, who will donate Xbox 360 consoles and Kinect to the the Boys and Girls Club of America. "Thousands" of clubs across the country will receive the donation package, which includes the 4GB Xbox 360 S Kinect bundle and a copy of Kinect Sports.
"When I heard Xbox 360 wanted to give Kinect to Clubs across the country, I had to jump in and help," he said. Wahlberg is active in the Boys and Girls Club of America, having spent a majority of his youth at Clubs. The promotion is part of the Boys and Girls Club's initiative to promote exercise and healthy activity amongst youth. We've never been to a Boys and Girls Club, but we imagine they're largely open warehouse space, because Kinect kinda needs that to work.
#review
The Xbox 360 finally has its motion-based sports game. Packed with six sports, ten if you include all of the events of track and field, Kinect Sports drops you controller-free into an eclectic mix of athleticism. More »
Since the launch of the Wii with its bundled Wii Sports, Nintendo's competitors have been ready with sports compilations designed to show off their respective motion control technologies. Sports Champions was arguably the most successful part of PlayStation Move's launch lineup and now, Microsoft brings Kinect to market with a completely stand-alone title: Rare's Kinect Sports.
In my (significant) time with it, I found an actual game that manages to deftly side-step being just a collection of tech demos through its polish, presentation and wide variety of genuinely fun activities.
Microsoft isn't just trying to bring families together in front of the TV with Kinect, it's also doing its best to bring thousands of New Yorkers together. The official launch event for the sensor will take place at the Times Square Toys R Us, and Microsoft is giving away substantial bonuses to early buyers.
The first 3,000 people to buy Kinects at the event will receive free copies of Kinect Sports and Kinect Joy Ride, along with a free year of Xbox Live Gold membership. And then, after all those hours of standing around, they'll get to go home and ... play games while standing. Random attendees will be handed prizes while in line, as well. Basically, what we're saying is you should go right now. Preferably sooner.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg said that he expects Kinect to sell more units during its launch period than the Wii did when it launched in 2006. "We'll definitely sell more sensors than the Wii sold when it launched or the Xbox 360 sold when it launched," said Greenberg, though he doesn't necessarily believe that sales will be dependent on high review scores. He noted that Kinect offers "different types of titles and experiences" than what most core users are used to.
"The correlation between a review score for Halo: Reach and sales is very high, but Kinect Sports is more about just having fun," said Greenberg, adding that Microsoft would certainly like to see high review scores, though he doesn't expect "the same type of correlation between reviews and actual sales of the game." Greenberg's comments echo similar comments from EA's Peter Moore last year, when he stated that casual Wii game sales are more dependent on Amazon user reviews than Metacritic.
Check out the whole interview for Greenberg's thoughts on Steel Batallion, Black Ops versus Halo: Reach and PlayStation Move, which he doesn't see as direct competition for Kinect
