With E3 looming, it's a great year ( again ) to be a 360 gamer. M$ has now firmly released Kinect to the world, becoming the fastest selling electronic device ever produced. And finding itself going into May and still selling out of Kinect/360 bundles regularly in UK, USA, Germany and I believe still Australia it will be grat to see when M$ get this sorted how much pulling power it has.

Microsft has as a result of the last 12 months concentration on Kinect, not really shed any light on hardly any games for 2011. We know some bits and bobs, but M$ never leaves it at that. M$ always has at least 3 - 5 games we dont know about. So what do we know. And what will likely make a huge appearance at this years E3 for M$?

Well what better way to start then to look at what is very very likely to be this years Number 1 selling game.

GEARS OF WAR 3:

Undoubtedly in with a GOTY chance Gears Of War 3 is M$'s 2nd swan song as a majot hit. And what a franchise it is. With Crysis 2 and Crytek showing the console world just how good graphics can be in the limited world of black boxes Epic need to stretch further than any developer before it to take the grphics crown for consoles back. Will they be dissapointed if they dont? We shall see. However with dedicated servers, The 2nd console game to run full Global illumination ( Crytek beat them to it ) and full team online modes Gears 3 is shaping up beautifully. See you at E3.

Forza Motorsport 4:

Ah Forza. Forza gets so much right. Turn 10 have got themselves a huge franchise here in terms of quality and finesse. Turn 10 leave enough time between iterations to allow progression, but not to long to cause frustration. What we get is vastly improved Forza experience every 3 years. Perfect timing. And looking at the next installment clearly shows Turn 10 are providing the best yet again. Anyone lucky enough to see Forza 4 leaked footage will testamont to how amazing the visuals are shaping up. But with Kinect integration and night and day with weather Forza 4 has it all. Most importantly that famous uber car designing mode. Welcome to E3 Forza 4.

CODENAME KINGDOMS:

Codename Kingdoms is quite the surprise considering Crytek have spent along time designing CryEngine 3 as a multiplat engine. However M$ probably knew if you want to show what a console is really capable of, why not use the most renowned company in the world with more graphics awards than George Lucas. And looking at Crysis 2's fantastic reception they made a great choice. Little is known about the game but rest assured we will here at E3. It'll be there to fend of the chasing pack aimng for their graphics crown back from Crysis 2.

STAR WARS KINECT:

Thankyou Lucasarts. Theres certain games only possible on Kinect. Star Wars is certainly one of them. It's not just about the lightsaber control. Because of course that can be done to an extent on Move or Wii. But it's the Force push, Pull, lift, lightning etc that you do with the same movements as the films. This is hopefully the Star Wars game 20 million fans have been waiting for. And the reason Kinect exists. No better hardcore game could have come to Kinect. Roll on E3.

MECHWARRIOR

Considered by many to be the best Mech series ever made, M$ unvieled this at GDC 2010. Silent? Talk of Kinect being used for this game cropped up over the holidays. Regardless expect this at E3 2011.

Please stop using the $ Selnor. I know you don't mean anything bad with it but people don't read it that way.

Anyway, I'm extremely worried about the Xbox exclusive lineup this year and I'm firmly convinced Kingdoms won't come out in 2011. We simply haven't seen anything from it and it seems to be quite a big of a project.

Cool thread though, because I just realized how important Star Wars Kinect is. It's the Kinect core game. Hopefully they don't rush it out, it could help selling a lot of Kinects.

Remeber FM3?

We knew and saw absolutely nothing about. It appeared at E3 that year, and went on to release just 4 months after it unveiled. Microsoft ( For you Slimebeast ) are always leaving stuff to last minute. It generates so much more hype because it's fresh in peoples minds.

We should all know by now we do not need to worry about any year with Microsofts lineup.

I totally agree with you on Kingdoms, there is hardly any information about its release at all and we are 4 months into the year already, I doubt it'll see a release date this year with so little info out, but early next year is a possibly

I think Star Wars Kinect too is an iffy title, how much have we heard about it and do we know if its not vaporware? the trailer released last E3 looked way to suspicious to be real and I don't know any recent developments with it so I'm not totally sure it that will release this year (if it does I very much dobut it'll be above 80 on metacritic)

Haha, thank you.

You are optimistic, I like that. I remember FM3, it was an epic moment on that E3. Yeah and it gives me hope we'll see one big quality exclusive reveal. Quality over quantity.

Yes.

And yes.

I agree the Star Wars trailer most definitely was "fake" and there's a huge risk they won't reach their goals with that game before they're forced to release it prematurely. There's a huge risk for that because it's the type of game that will sell a couple of millions on the name alone, no matter the quality. And meanwhile we know that core game development for Kinect is tricky and needs lots of creativity and innovation. :/

So basically, I am buying Gears of War 3 and Mass Effect 3....

I just can't see where these magic exclusives are coming from, apart from 343, who hasn't released a game recently?

Evey year this is said. And every year we have great exclusives. There is not a single worry that I will have bought more than 4 quality 360 exclusives this year. I mean Real quality.

What's Peter Molyneux working on at the moment? Surely they'll have some announcement from his studio?