Monday, June 1, 2009

E3: The Beatles do the Rock Band thing/Minority Report is for realz yo

Today was the opening day of E3 in Los Angeles, the annual big electronics/video game expo. Among some of the highlights:

- Paul and Ringo came out to (somewhat awkwardly) announce/hype The Beatles: Rock Band (trailer here), which looks like it could be the most interesting iteration of the music instrument genre since it looks like you'll be living the career of the Beatles, from humble beginnings to the famous rooftop. I noticed that Yoko Ono was on stage for a moment at the beginning, except she conveniently disappeared a second before Paul and Ringo came out.

- Confirming all the rumors, near the end of the show Hideo Kojima showed up and announced that the Metal Gear series was coming to the Xbox in the form of a new game (not MGS4 as people predicted). Another huge blow for Sony, who now have lost all of their major franchises to MS the last few years (Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Tekken).

- Microsoft managed to get Steven Spielberg on stage to help unveil a brand new motion-style interface currently still in production egregiously titled "Natal" (which only makes me think of fetuses). It's obviously Microsoft's response to the Nintendo Wii, but what they showed looked truly amazing. They've gotten away from controllers completely, allowing you to use your body as the controls. This was shown in an almost Minority Report style way, where you not only control the menus with your hands, but the system uses facial recognition so that when it sees your face it logs you in. Watch here.

- Yoggoth's arch-nemesis, game developer Peter Molyneux, was there, showing off some insanely futuristic (and probably insanely ambitious/will never get off the ground) application where you interact with a virtual boy named Milo on the screen, who looks incredibly life-like, and he recognizes you and has regular conversations, almost like a whole fictional person that you interact with. Watch the video to fully understand.

Sony and Nintendo better step up their game tomorrow and Wednesday if they're to beat what MS had today.

3 comments:

Little Earl said...

If there was footage of the press conference in that link, I did not find it. I did, however, watch the Rock Band trailer. What we need is a computer program that can generate new Beatles songs. You know, combine the styles and the voices and make them sound "authentic," like they were actually recorded in 1965. Now that I would buy.

"This was shown in an almost Minority Report style way, where you not only control the menus with your hands, but the system uses facial recognition so that when it sees your face it logs you in."

Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that this new technology will not be restricted only to video games?

Herr Zrbo said...

It was hard to find any footage from the actual event so soon after the event, that's why I didn't include any. I've found some now though, so check them out if you want to see Ringo and Paul talking about something they obviously have no clue about.

Anonymous said...

This is pretty interesting...

Thanks for sharing..
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