A few words from a professional procrastinator

I know these updates are coming pretty slow but they’re coming.

The Xbox360 had quite a showing at E3.

Project Natal is now Kinect
I knew there was something weird with the name Natal and apparently audiences did not warm up to the name which was announced to the public a year ago. It’s still pretty much the same and will still use the camera peripheral in order to track your movements. There’s no wand or wii mote to help the camera guide you so setting this up will be quite interesting. With that in mind, I’ll assume you can’t play this in a dimly lit room since the cameras need some light in order to track something it sees. The freedom in movement looks interesting with nothing in your hand to accidentally throw at your very expensive LCD TV. The list of games is pretty much the same as you would expect with motion control. You have your usual sports games but the dancing is a new thing for motion control since there is no floor pad. But is this new?

No, Sony had a similar device to this called the Eye Toy which was originally released on the PS2 and had it’s share of motion detection. Nothing new for Kinect other than the response time and the graphics. We’ll just have to wait and see when Kinect comes out in the fall.

Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360

Kinect Dance Central | E3 trailer XBox 360

There’s a new Xbox design

New XBOX 360 250GB E3 2010 [HD]

The new Xbox finally gets it right. Built in WiFi, 250 GB HD and Kinect ready. All wrapped up in a shiny black box. Doesn’t that remind you of another console?

But for most of us who might be buying this console, we already have one. How on Earth do we transfer all our stuff to the new console. You now can with this hard drive transfer kit for only $15 USD. You’d think they’d at least include it in the box.

Despite all of this the big question remains, has Microsoft fixed their dreaded red ring of death? I for one have gone through at least four consoles. Thankfully fixed by warranty but it’s the first time that a console actually died on me after all my years of gaming. Not to mention that it is the one console that all my friends and I share the same dilemma. It has died on us at least once.  It may have the most popular games but it is technically the worst console I have owned. Gone are the days where gaming consoles could take a beating. I try to limit moving the console from one place to another for fear of it getting broken. So have they fixed it? Reports say they have. Only time will tell. It’s available now for $299 USD.

But after all of their announcements, there’s still something missing in my opinion, the handheld. Yes the handheld. I’ve been waiting or clamoring for the Xbox team to come up with a portable gaming device to go up against Nintendo, Sony and of course Apple. It is the once space they haven’t made any inclinations of entering. Is it necessary for them to enter this space? Yes. Handhelds sell. Nintendo has sold more DS units than all the consoles sold by Sony and Microsoft together. I think it’s only a matter of time before they do. Maybe in five years, the same amount of time it took them to fix most of the Xbox 360.