Microsoft kicked off the announcement with a live demo of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 which looked pretty good and I’m not a fan of 1st person shooters. Following this was a demo of a new Lara Croft game. The president of EA Sports then took the stage to announce that there would be 4 new titles for the Xbox that all support Kinect this year, three of those were announced; Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Madden, and FIFA, with the fourth game being kept a secret. A Sims game to come out later this year will allow users to control their Sims using their voice. Next Mass Effect 3 was shown off which will allow users to talk to the Xbox to control their AI allies to do things. Ubisoft then showed off a new Ghost Recon game, the cinematic trailer looked pretty good, the games features Kinect integration allowing people to uses gestures and their voice to assemble weapons. An additional announcement from Ubisoft was that all future Tom Clancy games would feature Kinect integration.

Not really being a gamer myself  the games didn’t excite me as much as some and it would be best for you to check out the video of the announcement to see the Kinect integration in action.

Microsoft then moved on to new features for the Xbox, these included:

A new UI for the Xbox

I think the new interface looks great, that is probably because its Metro and very much like the Zune software. They didn’t show how to navigate the UI with a controller or even by moving one’s hands in front of a Kinect, instead we were shown how to navigate by using one’s voice. This was done by saying such things as “Xbox, Home” or “Xbox, Video”.

The great thing with this UI and the recently shown Windows 8 is that all Microsoft’s main products (the three screens) will all have the tiled, Metro UI. This should be great for introducing and keeping people within the Microsoft ecosystem but is still 18 months away from happening in a meaningful way.

The music hub

The games hub

The video hub

YouTube comes to Xbox

The video hub wont just show videos from a single source but will aggregate videos from Netflix and the Zune Marketplace. In addition to these Microsoft also announced that YouTube will now be coming Xbox and will be integrated into the videos hub. The addition of YouTube is just one of many as Microsoft will be increasing the number of partnerships with other services and companies from around the world by a factor of 10.

Sadly there were no pictures of the UI for YouTube shown off.

Bing!

With all this new content coming to the Xbox it only makes sense that Microsoft should provide a better way to explore all the content on one’s Xbox and this will be done via Bing. Bing will be integrated into the Xbox and will use Kinect to allow users to explore the entertainment content using their voice. To search one says “Xbox, Bing, [search item]” which then shows the user a horizontal list of all the items matching that item name.

Results of searching “Xbox, Bing, X-Men”.

Live TV

Perhaps the most important of today’s announcements is that Xbox will be featuring live TV through partnerships with companies such as Sky in the UK. This has long been a rumoured feature to come to Xbox and it is thought that it uses Microsoft’s MediaRoom technology to allow the Xbox to be a DVR allowing users to record live TV.

The live TV shows can be found using Kinect too, so just by talking to the Xbox it is possible to start watching a programme from any number of available channels.

Following these Xbox Live announcements Ultimate Fighting Championship showed off some new experiences for the Xbox and live sporting events. I’m not a fan of wrestling/fighting at all but some of the overlays and social elements looked interesting.

Following this Phil Spencer from Microsoft Studios took to the stage to announce that all following experiences were exclusive to the Xbox. He then went on to announce a trailer for Gears of War 3 followed by a trailer for Ryse, a 1st person game set in Rome. Then , what many had been waiting for, a new Halo game, well a remake of Halo; Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Forza Motorsport 4 was shown off with its Kinect integration and stunning graphics. Peter Molinoux then appeared on stage to present a new Fable game; The Journey. Fable: The Journey sees a new kind of Kinect use allowing the player to control a horse and cart as though they were holding the reins, its also possible to cast spells using one’s hands.

A popular piece of news for the people I follow on Twitter was that Minecraft will now be coming to Xbox coming with Kinect integration. In addition to this for the kids Disney and Microsoft are working together to bring Kinect Disneyland Parks to the Xbox to allow children to explore the parks and even do some mini games like flying with Peter Pan. Then the most exciting game I saw was shown, Kinect Start Wars! It looks great being able to wield a lightsaber, podrace and fly through the forest moon of Endor. The trailer and demo of Star Wars was then followed by another kids game called Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster which, obviously, features Kinect integration.

Next the Kinect Creative Director, Kudo Tsunoda, appeared on stage to announce a new Kinect tool to allow users to find the latest Kinect experiences from both large game studios and independent people. This tool is call the Kinect Fun Lab and is available for all Xbox Live users. Some of the experiences already in the Fun Lab are a way create a the most accurate Xbox avatar possible by using the Kinect, a way to use Kinect Finger Tracking to offer precise control for drawing in 3D and finally object capture that allows any object to be scanned by Kinect. Next up was Kinect Sports: Season 2 including new sports such as skiing and golf. Another game was announced and demoed that many of my followers will be excited about. Dance Central 2. The new game features voice control and a campaign mode and will also allow music from the first game to be copied to it.

There were some really stunning games announced today, some cross platform but most are exclusive to Xbox 360. For the most part the really interesting thing about these games is the Kinect integration which has some really great uses and I am sure we will see more Kinect integration in more games before the end of the year.

I really like the new UI for the Xbox 360 and think the voice control of Kinect will prove to be a really useful aspect of navigating around all the entertainment content that will be available on the Xbox by the end of the year.

However, there was one question I have from this event and that is what about the apps hub clearly shown off in the new UI. When will we hear about them? It has been rumoured that Microsoft would open up the Xbox to devs to create Silverlight apps, this still seems possible but its odd that no mention was made of the apps.

In addition to the announcement made there have been two more features announced that I think will please Xbox users. These are Xbox Beacons and cloud storage for profiles and game saves. The Xbox Beacons can be used to signal to friends on Xbox Live that a user wants to play a game or is already playing a game. The cloud storage could, in theory, allow a user to log onto someone else’s Xbox very quick and easily and then resume a game from there with minimal hassle. Sadly Microsoft didn’t announce this or show these features during their announcement today. 7 new Windows Phone Xbox Live games have also been announced.

You can watch the video of Microsoft’s press event here.

What did you think of today’s announcement? Has it persuaded you to buy an Xbox 360 and/or a Kinect?

The YouTube ad starts off as two people flapping around and jumping at the top of the page.

This quickly ends and presents the new branding for Xbox with the purple streak of Kinect.

Clicking the “Watch It In Action” expands the advert with links to Xbox.com, the Xbox/Kinect Facebook page and videos on YouTube from Xbox. Below this are a selection of videos showing how Kinect works for different games.

That is surely one expensive advert on YouTube and the device is still months away from being released. Microsoft are definitely pulling out all the stops for Kinect and I am really looking forward to what kind of promotions they will have in the build up to Kinect’s release on November 4th.

Have you seen any other interesting Xbox 360 or Kinect ads around the internet? Then please let me know.

Is it possible?

I think it is very likely to happen seeing as Microsoft are getting rid of the video uploading service SoapBox very soon. I can’t see Microsoft putting all this effort into Movie Maker and make it so easy to upload the videos but then not allow their users to upload it to one of their own services.

The video service could also be linked to other video uploading services like YouTube and show other users in someone’s network what videos they have been uploading.

One final thing that adds credibility to my prediction is that Paul Thurott, in his review of Movie Maker, says:

One thing that’s missing, of course, is a way to post your video creations on a Microsoft service. Since Microsoft killed the Soapbox service, there’s been a void, and while the company has nothing to announce at this time, suffice to say they will be adding Windows Live-oriented publishing capability in the future.

I’m not sure if there is a great need for a video service especially seeing as Microsoft are pulling their current video service and because of the competition, but then I thought that of Windows Live Photos and now I use that all the time. I would like to know more about this and hope to see what Microsoft have got planned for a Windows Live Video service.