E3 Gaming News: Xbox 360's Project Natal; Ringo, Paul Plug 'Rock Band'

Each year the biggest and brightest in the video game industry gather in Los Angeles to show off their wares destined for release in the coming months and years. It's called the Electronics Entertainment Expo, or E3. We're at the show, and here's the best of what happened on day one.


Microsoft Announces Project Natal

That Microsoft was working on a motion-based controller wasn't a surprise to most of the audience at the company's pre-show media event, but the exact capabilities of the thing certainly were. Dubbed "Project Natal" for now, it's a simple camera that sits in front of your television and, effectively, turns you into a video game controller. Unlike the Nintendo Wii, which relies on motion sensors and an actual 'Wiimote' that you have to hold, Natal simply detects your motions, letting you punch and kick and jump in combat games, sweep through menus with a simple gesture, and even raise your hand to answer trivia questions.

The camera can also recognize your face and detect what you're saying, as evidenced by the conversation between a Microsoft employee and Milo, a virtual boy who communicates with you using the Project Natal camera (Milo is essentially a much more realistic version of Sega's Seaman, if you remember that interactive buddy created for Sega Dreamcast back in the mid-to-late-'90s ). It's all very early now and we're not expecting to see Microsoft release the product until 2010 at the earliest, but we'll certainly be watching it closely until then.



'Beatles Rock Band' Rocks

Music games have taken the gaming world by storm, and the next big installment looks to be 'Beatles Rock Band,' which none other than Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr actually came to support on Monday morning by appearing live on stage at the Microsoft press conference. The special edition of the game sports fab-looking instruments and lots of authentic tunes, but we already knew that.

What we didn't know was that the game is launching on 9/9/09 for the Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3), the same day as a complete re-release of newly remastered recordings of the entire Beatles collection. The game itself won't include all the songs, but 45 (including "I Am the Walrus," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and "Back in the USSR") will be included to start, with new ones coming every week.

The game has a great visual flare to it -- onscreen fashion, hairstyles and scenery change constantly to reflect the period of specific songs, for example -- that fans of the Four will love. Of course, getting points for singing along to the tunes they already know and love ain't bad either.



Microsoft Adds 1080p HD Live Streaming and Last.fm to Xbox 360

Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PS3 are fighting when it comes to gaming supremacy, but they're also dicing it out to see who can take the lead when it comes to other media forms. Microsoft is looking to take a big step forward with a number of enhancements to the console's media capabilities, including the ability to play Hollywood movies in 1080p high definition over the Internet without waiting for long downloads or buffers. Also coming is compatibility with the Last.fm music streaming service, meaning a constant supply of fresh tunes, and European Xbox owners will be getting SkyTV content pushed straight to their gaming systems live. Sadly, we in America won't be getting any live TV content just yet, but the other enhancements should be available sometime this fall.


Madden 10 to Support Web-Based Franchise Management

EA Sports's Madden is by far the dominant player in the video game football realm, and in many ways the biggest franchise in all of gaming. It's getting even bigger with a huge enhancement that Electronic Arts unveiled at its media breifing: online franchise management. Players of Madden 10 (which ships in time for football season this fall) will be able to log on to the Madden Web site and manage their team, set up trades, manage leagues, and basically waste a whole lot of time getting everything just so. EA is even releasing an iPhone app, meaning you can tweak your team wherever you are. Madden addicts, your free time just got a little more busy.


New Halo Title Coming in 2010

Microsoft has already teased an upcoming chapter in the Halo franchise called ODST, which is due out in September. Halo is the most popular shooter on the company's Xbox 360 console, and ODST gives gamers a new perspective on some of the biggest sequences in the latest entrant, Halo 3. But, Microsoft surprised everyone with another new Halo title, called Halo Reach. The company showed off a brief teaser of the game, but didn't disclose any information beyond a very vague release date: 2010. We'll obviously be keeping an eye on this one.


Metal Gear Franchise Finally Coming to Xbox 360

Another surprise at the Microsoft show, this time courtesy of Hideo Kojima, creator of the popular Metal Gear series of stealth games. He'd been teasing something new, and now we know what it is: another Metal Gear Solid title, only this one is the first for Xbox 360 (the series had previously only shown up on PlayStation 3). It's called Metal Gear Solid Rising, and will focus on Raiden, a character who we've seen for a few iterations now. By the looks, we'll figure out a lot more about this enigmatic, digitally augmented, character. The game itself is also unfortunately rather enigmatic, with no further information known at this point -- Kojima likes his mysteries.

Tags: e3, e3 2009, E32009, electronic arts, ElectronicArts, madden, madden 10, Madden10, microsoft