Kinect Sports: Season 2 Message Board

Microsoft's Xbox 360 Kinect Holiday Value Bundle is on sale for $239 as part of today's Gold Box discounts on Amazon. Those that act fast will get the redesigned Xbox 360 E console loaded with a 250 GB hard drive, a controller, a Kinect camera and three games: Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports: Season 2 and a download code for Forza Horizon.

The bundle normally costs $399, amounting to enough savings to pick up a few extra games, or better yet, groceries so you don't starve this month. Again, the deal is only on for today as long as supplies last, and is a great deal for people that haven't bought an Xbox 360 in the last few days like your humble Joystiq editor has. It's also a good deal for those that aren't picking up a PS4 or Xbox One this coming month.

While now may not be the best time to buy a new Xbox 360, this close to the holidays, we're certainly not going to judge your need of one. Instead, we're here to help you save some money - hey, look, a deal!

The Microsoft store is currently offering a $299.99 bundle that tosses in the 4GB Xbox 360 console with a Kinect sensor and two games: Kinect Adventures, which is included with every Kinect sensor; and Kinect Sports Season 2, Microsoft's sequel to its initial sports minigame collection.

The bundle also tosses in 12 months of Xbox Live Gold, a three-month subscription to Hulu Plus, an Xbox 360 media remote and an HDMI cable. It's the HDMI cable that really gets us.

A former artist at Rare has given us a peek behind the curtain at the studio's "Savannah" project and the eventual elimination of Killer Instinct. Speaking with NotEnoughShaders, Donnchadh Murphy, who was a 3D modeler at Rare but now works at an animation studio, revealed the developer was working on a project called "Savannah" for Kinect.

Savannah (models pictured) was going to be a Kinect title where players raised a lion cub from birth, teaching the animal survival skills. The game was only ever a prototype and was never greenlit.

Meanwhile, Murphy said, the company was always interested in revisiting the Killer Instinct franchise in HD, as is often requested by ardent Rare fans. "We all wanted to make KI3, but Microsoft [was] more interested in broadening their demographic than making another fighting game," he said. "So it never got made, I doubt it ever will."

College football enthusiasts first laid eyes on Microsoft's Kinect float prior to kickoff at this year's Rose Bowl game today, but how else can those without an affinity for football sneak a glimpse? Microsoft's Facebook page, apparently.

The above video was posted today, a time lapse of the massive structure being built over the course of a week. A second video embedded past the break shows the finished float going through a few maneuverability tests -- sorry, we can confirm there's no Deathmobile hiding underneath.

Usually, it's pretty expensive to get in nine holes at the local country club, let alone the cost of clubs and those mandatory plaid pants. But thanks to video games, no longer must we tempt fate by braving the deadly fauna and flora of the outside world.

If you're fine with miming golf in your domicile, the Maple Lakes DLC for Kinect Sports: Season 2 may interest you. It adds nine new holes on December 20, for 400 MS Points ($5).

Describing Kinect Sports: Season 2 instills in me an intense sense of deja vu. The mini-game collection allows players to pantomime sports actions in bite sized amounts from the safety of their living room. Wait, that sounds really familiar. Haven't we all already done that before, like, last year? ...

Microsoft has issued the first round of DLC for Kinect Sports: Season Two. The Challenge Pack #1 adds a new mini-game activity for each of the game's six sports. Most of them boil down to practice drills, like returning an infinite stream of tennis shots or landing a forty yard field goal in football. There's also the more quizzical addition to darts, which requires players to solve math problems with accurate throws (which is sure to be a challenge, given our experience with the game).

The add-on is free, and marks the first in a series of free monthly downloadable content. Microsoft plans to expand the game every month through "spring 2012" with new activities and, at some point, a new sport. There's no telling what the new sport might be, though we can only hope it doesn't involve any more running in place.

Kinect Sports may have been little more than a tech demo for the fledgling Kinect hardware, but I'll be damned if it wasn't an enjoyable tech demo. It was the stuff of family gathering legends: A game which allowed you to interact with sporting events in a somewhat limited way, using rudimentary, instantly familiar gestures. It wasn't the most intricate or intellectual use of the device's motion-tracking capabilities, but for a launch title, it worked.

If anything, Kinect Sports: Season Two is an exquisite example of how far the Kinect's software has come over the past year -- only, not in a good way. After a few hours of mock-football, mock-baseball or, perplexingly, mock-darts, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that the Kinect can be (and has been) used for so much more.

If you're looking into jumping into either the Dance Central or Kinect Sports franchises sequel-first, Amazon's offering you a chance to catch up on your back catalog for peanuts. For a limited time, if you buy Dance Central 2 or Kinect Sports: Season 2, you can get their prequels for half-off.

Anxious to see what's in store for Kinect Sports Season 2? Huddle up with the video above -- or, of course, you could just download the demo available on Xbox Live right now.

Microsoft has released a demo of Kinect Sports Season Two on Xbox Live, including two of the game's six sports: golf and tennis. Incidentally, if your living room is big enough to play virtual doubles in front of the Kinect, you could probably just play actual tennis.

I walked into the demo area for Kinect Sports: Season 2 tired and grumpy. It felt too early to get moving, and I felt like I'd played plenty of motion controlled sports titles in life already. But after a few swings with a virtual baseball bat I found myself smiling, joking with the other player, and -- dare I admit it -- having fun...