Will Kinect Go Down as Microsoft's Game-Changer?

LOS ANGELES--If one thing was clear in the lead-up to the Xbox 360 E3 press conference, it was that hardcore gamers felt threatened by Microsoft's obvious move toward casual gaming with its forthcoming Kinect motion control system.

That much was evident at the press conference, which took place here Monday morning. Before Kinect was ever mentioned, those in the audience were blasted with demos of purely hardcore titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops, Metal Gear Solid: Rising, Halo: Reach, and Gears of War 3. The new Call of Duty, from the developer Treyarch, rather than Infinity Ward, which made the record-breaking Call of Duty: World at War, will be released on November 9, while Halo: Reach is expected in September.

And with a new, slimmer and smaller $299 Xbox hitting retailers this week with its 250-gigabyte hard drive and built-in Wi-Fi, hardcore gamers who choose to buy the new model will have plenty of hardware to work with.

There's no doubt, though, that the star of Monday's Xbox event was Kinect, formerly known as Project Natal. Kinect will be released in North America on November 4, and while Microsoft hasn't yet named its price--rumors have it in the $100 to $150 range--you can be sure Microsoft is going to want to make it accessible to the masses that it now hopes to lure in to the Xbox platform.

And that's what Kinect is: a platform play. Microsoft sees the new hardware--which can sense and respond to users' body motions as well as their voices--taking an integral role in the living room, and joining with Xbox Live to bring the Xbox that much closer to the entire family.

"I believe that the living room is being redefined and reimagined," said Marc Whitten, the general manager of Xbox Live, in an interview. "How people are going to consume entertainment is changing in this amazing time we are in. When you look at Xbox 360 and what we have with Live, and the power to bring in Kinect, which gives you this natural user interface to drive on top of that, that's what's going to be really special--whether that's about all the games you can play or the new user entertainment experiences. It's really about how you get people to expect more out of their living room."

The idea is to integrate Kinect with Microsoft's entire living room play. So, for example, users will be able to control Netflix movies or TV shows through Xbox Live with nothing more than a wave or two of their hands and a voice command to stop, pause, or play. They will be able to have video chats with friends, watch pro sports games via a Microsoft content partnership with ESPN and, of course, play games.

Read the rest of this article at CNET News.com.