Microsoft announced a raft of new features for its Xbox Kinect system as it looks to tempt hardcore gamers to the hardware.

Titles like Mass Effect and Ghost Recon will utilise the motion-detection system in their next installments.

Voice capabilities have also been ramped up, allowing users to access content by speaking commands like "Xbox Bing Johnny Depp".

The company says it will "transform how people enjoy entertainment".
The announcement came at the biggest gaming event of the year, the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.

It is the latest move in Microsoft's war against the
controller as the company intends the new voice search to negate the
need for the traditional television remote control.


Yves Guillemot
Ubisoft



"This year by bringing together
the power of Kinect for Xbox 360 and the intelligence of Bing, we are
transforming how people enjoy entertainment," said Don Mattrick,
Microsoft's president of interactive entertainment business.

For the first time, YouTube will be added to the range of
video services offered through Xbox Live, along with Netflix and Hulu
Plus.

Microsoft has already worked with television companies in the
UK, France and Australia to bring live television shows to local
audiences, and it plans to do the same in the United States and other
countries.
Big believers
While 10 million Kinect systems have been sold since November
last year, over 40 million Xbox gamers are still yet to get on board.

Microsoft, along with games developers, will hope the new
titles will attract serious gamers who have not yet been tempted by the
Kinect's mostly family-friendly array of games.

Among the titles planned for release is the latest in the
long-running Tom Clancy series. Ghost Recon will let people use gestures
to virtually dismantle and customise weapons.

Ubisoft chief executive Yves Guillemot said all future Tom Clancy games would use Kinect.
"We have been big believers in Kinect since day one," he said.





The announcements have not impressed some of Xbox's "serious" gamers


"What we have done with Ghost Recon and Kinect is something a gamer cannot do with a traditional controller," he said.

Trying to appeal to serious gamers is a flawed tactic, argued Ben Biggs, games editor for 360 Magazine.

"While I appreciate Kinect as a piece of technology, the
Microsoft press conference has just highlighted how redundant it is to a
hardcore gamer," he told the BBC.

"There's nothing that Kinect currently does that is either of
any gameplay value to me or that cannot be replicated just as
effectively by a controller or headset."

Deputy editor of the magazine, Dan Howdle, was equally
unimpressed - suggesting yesterday's event was the "worst Microsoft
press conference yet".

"Microsoft needs to take a serious look at its core audience and get things back on track with providing for their needs," he wrote.
"It promised to deliver to its core gamers, but instead it's
filled their core titles with a bunch of Kinect irrelevances, and made
2011-2012 the best 12 months on Xbox 360 for eight year-old girls."

this is a primitive step to VR technology i guessing ^^.maybe in a few more years we will have VR helmet or sleep pod and we can play in our sleep or by using thoughts heh

Shu so lazy XD

Getting too old to click those buttons gramps? :P

sniff.=p

not that snow.

in online chinese novels about VR gaming mmo,playing in them actually is believe to help in evolve the human mind and body to make u react faster and expand the brain evolution and help one live longer hehe

and some novels u can even gain special powers if u get lightning/glitch hit your pod/helm while u are playing inside ^^.imagine bring ur char abilities out to the open world hehe.

btw this is also mention in some english mmo.where the mmo world is control by a AI and players got trap inside.and when they come out they found they have the powers of their char irl hehe.

and don't forget the matrix ^^ in a way the matrix world is a VR world.just way more advanced then what we have now haha.

Rawr Shu I was just joking :P

Anyway yeah, myself I have a matrix type of belief

What I think is a possibility, that we all are

a. Programmed, and we'r actually part of a huge mmo kind of game, and we simply can not know it because we'r programmed that way XD

This could be an ongoing circle, imagine.
World 1 (Whichever place it started): Made a huge mmo game, where you have planets and galaxy and all kind of other possible things.
Then that game got so advanced, they actually made a game inside the game, that is a totally new galaxy on its own, where you have the earth and all that we know.

So someone could be playing a game, that he is playing a game inside that game, and inside there they actually build a new world, which others play, it could be like an infinite ammount of games playing each other by some kind of other being.

Many of us could actually be NPCs, without knowing we are, or that others are npcs (imagine people fulfilling some functions etc, just npcs XD, teachers all robots, or even a mix)

Anyway once we design the technology in this world to live in another world, that's when a new circle ll start, and maybee not all ll join in, some get stuck playing in this world, while others move on to this new world/mmo

b. We are indeed lieing in some kind of cocons/pods/containers and actually playing/living while sleeping or doing other things.
For the same part we might be not human at all, and this all is an mmorpg, where we take the roles of the in game characters (humans)

This can go even further, we'r anticipating and wondering if there's aliens out there.
They are not. Why not, because that game expansion/update isn't out yet, and the alien race isn't layable yet!!!

Rofl I know these are farfetched ideas, but I think it's pretty cool stuff for a fantasy book or something, and on top of that how can you even say it's not that way, if you'r programmed to think it's not XD

ya heh.but it kinna sux to think we are npc pffft.all could be true and death is just another world where u get send to a new world to get born again there.

in one novel a group of npc found out they are living in a box and the alien aka god is their creator.and when they try to escape the box the battle begins as the creator AI program send out forces to stop them hehe

anyway novels and theories aside.i do hope they will come out with VR hardware soon.and i bet once the technology for it is out.all the world government will ban the creation of VR sex world games for fear of real life girls getting ditch by their boyfriend cos they prefer the VR wife instead lol.or the other way since the girl can have perfect bf in game so they ditch their inperfect bf irl heh.

then the world population will be cut by 1/3 or more after a century till they invent artificial inception of babies using fake womb instead of a mother womb where the doctor just need to inject the dna or sperm of both parents to make baby heh

In my time here in aetherius this is the craziest conversation I've ever seen rofl
You two should stop sleeping over the keyboard while playing MMOs
In the extremely unlikely case that u 2 r right, if I die (accident, age ,etc), can u bring a cleric?