Hapimeses said:
Rainbird said:
Hapimeses said:
Totally fair stance to have. It was, in general, a dull affair. Although Kaz referencing Jack's hideous tie, and Jack mentioning the Ridge Racer moment in return made me laugh hard.
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Yeah, that was brilliant. 
It's actually funny, but I think Microsoft's conference was more exciting for me. I'm very excited about what Kinect can bring to the industry, and some of the things they showed for Kinect were almost mindboggling to me. 
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Really? I didn't think any of the Kinect stuff looked new or interesting. It all seemed to be pretty poor. What stood out for you as mindboggling?
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First you must understand that I am a huge fan of NUIs (natural user interface/interaction), so touch screens, motion controls and what not are awesome, when they're done right at least. Windows 8? I love it. Apple's post PC philosophy? I love it. As a user, the more invisible the technology is to me, the better it is.
Secondly, I'm studying to become a software engineer, so I'm quite impressed by what's going on behind the scenes as well.
Now, the good stuff.
- The new interface looks rad. Microsoft are using Kinect to improve navigation on the 360, in a more natural way than ever before, while also making it easier to navigate than ever before. I really hope Microsoft brings a lot of content to Denmark with that update so I can start ditching everything else.
- Throughout the entire conference, the voice commands worked seamlessly without fail. In the normal Xbox navigation, you have to say "Xbox" first so the machine knows you're talking to it, so it's understandable that it works, but Ghost Recon and Mass Effect 3 were very impressive.
- In the Ghost Recon demo, you have the Ubisoft president talking over the speakers and asking questions to the presenter, and you have the presenter explaining various gameplay mechanics, all while we're in the Gunsmith mode (so we know Kinect is listening). Without fail, Kinect reacts only to the commands directed at it by the presenter (without any preceding keywords like "Xbox"), despite all this chatter going on around it. Some of the gestures look very Minority Report like too, I'm looking forward to feeling awesome with those.
- In Mass Effect 3, the conversation system looks like it has potential for upping immersion a bit, which is awesome. The combat commands look like a noticable improvement in gameplay over going through the various menus, and again the implementation looks flawless.
The not-so-mindblowing-but-still-fun-looking stuff is this:
- The magic in Fable actually looks like it's fun to use. Everything is still very much up in the air here and the game does look cheesy, but I can easily imagine having fun with it.
- The same kind of goes for Star Wars, but I'm more sceptical on that front. The implementation doesn't seem up to par, but I have a feeling it's something that needs to be played to really get a feel for. I'm still sold on the idea of using lightsabers and the Force with Kinect though, which is why it's on here.
And that's all I can remember for now. 
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