It’s the weekend! So it’s time for a weekly round up, but this one is focused on E3. It’s not all about news, but more like a description of what we went through and what to expect on GamingAngels still. I hope you enjoy and have a great weekend!

Firstly, Microsoft, if I truly believed holding the weight of a controller was cumbersome, I would have no “Kinection” or desire to “Kinect” to the video-game realm in the first place. As a gamer, I need a controller. No, I’m serious. I need one. It just feels right. Don’t laugh, hee. Maybe it’s because I don’t find that “simplicity” should always be the standard to look forward to. I attribute a lot of fond memories to a controller, man. Ironically, I see and feel a controller as my only connection to an uncontrollable environment. I see it as a necessity. I see it as a bond between, say John Marston and I. Like, we’re both a reserved Outlaw with a great purpose; except only he is, I just guide him like some-sort of encouraging and meaningful relationship. To imagine I can no longer have a controller providing a kind-of division between Marston and myself is frightening. Contrary to other thought-provoking articles I’ve come across, I don’t want any sort-of joined persona. I don’t care to relate to him. I don’t want to become “one” with him. At all, actually. I don’t care to feel like I am him. I want my immersion and Marston, as a character, to be separate entities. I’d rather be on a stallion galloping next to him.

This is one reason I’ve essentially never “got” the Wii. It nudged these boundaries, yes, but it still never quite broke them. Yeah, it’s fun, but I never found it to be a level replacement for the actual activities themselves. If I want to go for a “joy ride,” I get in my car. If I want to go bowling, I go bowling. If I want to dance, I grab a chair and do a private round of Striptease. If I want to game, I’ll play a game. I play it, not air guitar it. Maybe because “Kinect” is essentially ridding a representation of something inherently valuable to me and it’s playing on my fragile emotions. See? Yet another reason why women shouldn’t be left alone to run an entire country. Just kidding. Just scared to say I’m not kidding, actually.

Then again, I may never have to worry about “Kinect” or similar forthcoming technology taking-over, simply because I’ve declared myself an outcast from the growing “casual” demographic and it may never reach my own niche at all. Think about the amount of work it’d take to motion-sensor a game like Call of Duty, if at all possible. It would give a whole, new meaning to “hand-gun,” though.

See, I understand I’m not in the solely “casual” gaming category, but “Kinect” honestly feels like a promising concept gone to waste on a demographic that probably couldn’t care less about the rapid technological evolution imminent in the gaming industry. At least, not nearly as much as I. Probably most of this demographic stayed home for E3, anyway. I’m fully aware of the “multi-genre” gamer who could very well be excited about the possibilities of “Kinect,” because I could be, too. What about the people who refuse to buy a Wii or “Kinect” just to fake-it? I’m last on the list. It’s likely you or I won’t be seeing the implementation of “Kinect” to suit my needs as a “hardcore” gamer anytime soon, so I’m just a tad flustered that accessibility will likely take precedence over making my experience better. As the saying goes, “Its just not fair!” Now I’ll need to go out and purchase the Wii I never did because I just wasn’t appreciative of the controller-hand “kinection.” Or should I say, “diskinection?” Whatever.

The product has a new name and the room full of press got a night of art and confusion. Project Natal became Kinect and no matter what you think of the name, it’s going to take time to get used to. Our theory of how they got to Kinect is generating community through motion (thanks Manda and Candice!). The name will probably be explained during the press conference, but I’d like to think we nailed it.

The Show
The world premier of Kinect was brought to us by Cirque Du Soleil. Walking in, we knew right away we were in for some sort of experience. Press was handed a poncho that contained shoulder pads that Grace Jones would be proud of.

The dancers of Cirque Du Soleil entertained from before the show starting through the end of the show. A family was perched up above and unfortunately half of the audience had to stand in the floor below. Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg was pulled into the act by various dancers. An elephant started to walk across the room, summing up the theme of the night, “humans are at the center and machines will be the one that adapts.”

A child walked up the hill of rocks, playing various games along the way until he reached the Xbox Mountain and was greeted by Kinect. At that point Cirque stopped being the major focus and Kinect came into play and our shoulder pads turned green.

The Games
USA Today did a pretty good job with spoiling the list of games that were going to be shown. Most of the titles seemed very much like what we have seen on the Wii. Racing, river rafting all showcasing the family playing together. Disney’s showcase was only Tink flying around the building. Which doesn’t give us much information as to what they are doing to support Kinect. The coolest thing of the night was the Star Wars lightsaber battles. I can see myself playing that after every bad day at work.

Of course there is a Yoga title. Then came the very cute animals game. At the end of the press conference we got a plushie animal to give away at GamingAngels. If you tell me how bad you want it!! The plushie has a key for when the animal game launches. This concept is very similar to Webkins and should probably do very well for them. Last up was the MTV dance title.

We should hear more about these titles tomorrow.
The Apps
Kinect also supports applications. They showcased video chat which is what I want to use to do all GamingAngels meetings. They only showed 4 people connected at once. Other apps were Facebook, Twitter, Zune, Netflix, the Animal game, and Video Chat.

Overall Verdict
Overall, it was a great fusion of two arts coming together, video games and dance. The show was visually stunning, but at times felt like it was dragging. Way too much overacting for me.

Will Kinect sell? I don’t know. I won’t be able to make a judgment until I have a hands-on. I want to see how responsive it really is. Based on the game selection shown, they have enough to get a casual market and to bring in some hardcore, but they will need to announce more if Microsoft wants to win over the hardcore gamers.

“Future of humanity is humanity itself.”

I really don’t know much about Justin Bieber other than his fans seem to have some sort of fever and this kid is the hottest musical act right now. He’s even up for a BET award!

Microsoft wants to capitalize on the Bieber fever and is looking to market to a new audience…teen girls. Xbox 360 is sponsoring Justin Bieber tour to bring Project Natal to Bieber fans at every stop in the US. Fans will be able to play at the kiosks.

“We’re thrilled to partner with such a talented star,” said Grover Holtzclaw, Xbox Director of Platform and Partner Marketing. “Justin Bieber’s known for his ability to entertain fans, and now with “Project Natal” for Xbox 360, fans can enjoy an extraordinary entertainment experience on the Bieber concert stage and in their own homes this holiday season.”

The tour starts on September 5th in Maryland with tickets going on sale on June 11. A dollar from every ticket sale will be donated to Pencils of Promise.

Here’s the schedule if you are interested. I know it would be for Project Natal right?

JUSTIN BIEBER “MY WORLD” NORTH AMERICAN TOUR – Second leg dates

Date City, Venue

September 5 Timonium, MD Maryland State Fair
14 Winnipeg, MB MTS Centre
16 Regina, SK Brandt Centre
17 Saskatoon, SK Credit Union Centre
19 Edmonton, AB Rexall Place
20 Calgary, AB Pengrowth Saddledome

October 19 Vancouver, BC General Motors Place
22 Sacramento, CA ARCO Arena
24 Ontario, CA Citizens Business Bank Arena
25 Los Angeles, CA STAPLES Center
27 Anaheim, CA Honda Center
28 San Jose, CA HP Pavilion at San Jose
30 San Diego, CA San Diego Sports Arena

November 3 Oklahoma City, OK Ford Center
5 San Antonio, TX AT&T Center
6 Houston, TX Toyota Center
8 St. Louis, MO Scottrade Center
10 Louisville, KY KFC Yum! Center
11 Cleveland, OH, Wolstein Center
13 Norfolk, VA Scope Arena
14 Philadelphia, PA Wachovia Center
16 Boston, MA TD Banknorth Garden
17 East Rutherford, NJ IZOD Center
20 Atlantic City, NJ Boardwalk Hall
22 Montreal, QC Bell Centre
23 Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre

December 13 Pittsburgh, PA Consol Energy Center
15 Greensboro, NC Greensboro Coliseum
16 Greenville, SC BI-LO Center
18 Miami, FL American Airlines Arena
19 Tampa, FL St. Pete Times Forum
21 Birmingham, AL BJCC Arena
23 Atlanta, GA Philips Arena

Friday night Matt and I started up the Xbox 360 to play Borderlands when we noticed an ad for Top Shot. Top Shot is the current show he’s working on and it’s premiering on the History Channel on June 6 at 10/9c.

I want to embed the trailer but, there is absolutely no way I can. But if you visit their Facebook page you can see all the videos including the one where they talk about their gaming skills.

Top Shot is a show where contestants get to prove that they have the best natural shot and win $100,000. The elimination challenges will feature real events in history, from Wild West shootouts to modern-day sniper missions.

Here are the rules to enter for a chance to win some cool gamer essentials or a trip to Los Angeles for the Project Natal Experience:

Register for the sweepstakes between May 6 and June 5, 2010. There are two ways to register. Register online here, www.xbox.com/topshotpwreg or register by downloading the Top Shot Gamer Picture to your console. There are two ways to download this item to your console. Queue it up for download here or find it in the Themes & Gamer Pictures section of your Dashboard.
Sweepstakes Entry

Registered players will get an entry into the sweepstakes when they log on to Xbox LIVE and play a multiplayer session of Modern Warfare 2 between 12:01 A.M. Pacific Time on June 4 and 11:59 P.M. PT on June 5, 2010. There is a limit of one entry per person/gamertag.

Good luck and tune in to watch a show that Matt is working on! Plus there is a female in the show and I hear she’s pretty good!

Microsoft is going to “borrow” some of Nintendo’s marketing skills for Project Natal. According to MCV, Microsoft is planning to use celebrity endorsements and will be meeting with companies to get coverage in non-games media like Vogue and Glamour.

Does this mean that Natal will be basically a fitness machine? Aaron Greenberg stated that Natal would not just have casual game titles thrown at it, but these meetings seems to suggest otherwise. We can only hope that Natal will have more substance than we’ve seen on the Wii.

Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg told Joystiq that we should expect to see more from the gadget at this year’s E3, but right now, they’re still in a codename state. Project Natal will likely be shown off once again — under a new name — at the June event.

Another interesting tidbit is that Microsoft is considering games for Natal to be an entirely different game category than your usual controller fare.

Greenberg expects Natal to be in “millions of homes” by Holiday 2010 — so we’ve got something to look forward to over the next ten months, if it’s going to be that popular.

Tonight’s Microsoft keynote live from CES started out rough and didn’t end much better than it began. A power outage caused the feed to run 30 minutes late, and featured two 3 minute time wasting videos featuring Seth Meyers (SNL’s Weekend Update). The stream was also plagued with audio issues.

After hocking various computers from makers like Sony, Asus, and Lenovo, braving the “student role-play” as we got a tech demo on Media Room features for Media Center users, Robbie Bach entered the stage to bring in the big finish….. Right?

Mr. Bach started off with reminding us that Mass Effect 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction are coming to the 360 in the next two months. He confirmed two content packs for Modern Warfare 2 that will be exclusive to Xbox 360, as well as confirming that Fable 3, Crackdown 2 and Alan Wake will be in our homes by Holiday 2010. He also restated that Project Natal will also be available and will work with existing 360 units when it too comes home Holiday 2010.

Game Room was also formally announced. It will feature over 30 original arcade classics from Atari, Intellivision, etc, and is due to arrive in Spring 2010. It was not mentioned if this will be free to Gold members or if there will be an additional cost. You will be able to invite friends into your game room and play against each other. Also, if you purchase the game on your 360, it will also be available to you on your PC, achievements and leaderboards in tact.

Other worthy facts: there are over 5 million copies of the Halo novels in print, Christmas week saw 2.2 million users (1 new user per second) on Xbox Live, 10 million members using their 360s to log into Twitter and Facebook, and over 100 million songs downloaded for music games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Two major disappointments were blackouts to the live stream for the Halo: Reach and Game Room demos. MajorNelson was not aware that the Reach and Natal videos were to be blacked out, and has said via his Twitter stream that he will be talking to people on behalf of the gamers. He did promise that there will be footage of Game Room on Inside Xbox later tonight.

EDIT: Check out the Game Room demo here.

EDIT 2: And a link to the Halo: Reach demo.

It’s not too surprising that various game development companies are looking at using Natal in various ways. Co-founder of RedOctane, Kai Huang told the Seattle Times that the Guitar Hero group is playing with the idea of having a camera track player’s movements. He also confirmed Guitar Hero 6 (like you didn’t know that was coming!).

Huang said, “We haven’t made any specific announcements of what we’re doing with new technologies in Guitar Hero 6 and beyond, but one of the areas we’re exploring certainly is camera technology and what you can do — track your movements and maybe have your characters on the screen do certain things you’re doing, or personalize it more so it can look more like you on stage rather than just be an avatar. There are a lot of possibilities that technologies like Natal will bring, and we’re definitely exploring those.”

Microsoft is at Tokyo Game Show this week giving many gamers a glimpse at Project Natal. Microsoft kicked things off by announcing partners that are working on Natal based projects.

They are:
Activision Blizzard
Bethesda
Capcom
Disney Interactive
Electronic Arts
Konami
MTV Games
Namco Bandai
Sega
Square Enix
THQ
Ubisoft

A video was released earlier today showing Microsoft director, Kudo Tsunoda demoing Ricochet and Burnout Paradise for a local news show in Tokyo.

GameSetWatch, who posted the video, says to make sure to watch the bit at 03:35 when “Tsunoda slowly claps with the Japanese host, cheering, ‘Yes, very good for you. I’m so happy,’ before turning to flash a cheesy smile and give a thumbs up.”

That alone makes it priceless and the surfing music. Enjoy!