Microsoft announces five new exclusive Kinect games from Japanese developers

From what we’re feeling, consumer sentiment on the Kinect seems rather divided, and frankly the opinions of those within the Engadget team is similarly split. Ultimately, though, it won’t be the hardware itself that decides the fate of this peripheral, it’ll be the games. At E3 this year Microsoft didn’t really wow us with any Kinect titles that turned the thing into a must-buy, but the five games announced today are at least showing some creativity and a lot of potential. Read on for all the details.

Continue reading Microsoft announces five new exclusive Kinect games from Japanese developers

Microsoft announces five new exclusive Kinect games from Japanese developers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 02:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Turtle Beach crams 7.1 channels into Ear Force DX11 gaming headset

5.1 channels of faux surround sound not enough for your two ears? Fret not, dear gamers, as Turtle Beach has outdone itself once more. The Ear Force DX11 gaming headset launched today for Xbox 360 and PC gamers, providing a pair of 40mm drivers, a fold-down microphone (with accompanying ‘fro, naturally), a breakout Dolby 7.1 processor, bass boost, S/PDIF-to-analog converter, front panel USB pass-through port and independent volume controls for game and voice signals. It’s available to pre-order right now exclusively from Best Buy, with a rather lofty $129.99 price standing between you and multi-channel nirvana.

Continue reading Turtle Beach crams 7.1 channels into Ear Force DX11 gaming headset

Turtle Beach crams 7.1 channels into Ear Force DX11 gaming headset originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Sep 2010 23:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceTurtle Beach, Best Buy  | Email this | Comments

Leaked Xbox 360 dashboard gets demonstrated on video

Digg

We’ve already gotten a brief look at the new Xbox 360 Dashboard that’s leaked out courtesy of the Kinect beta program, but now that it’s well and truly leaked across the internet, we’re getting a much better picture of what’s in store for the rest of us later this fall. As you can see above and in the pair of videos after the break, the new Dashboard is decidedly squarer than the current one, and contains few elements that haven’t gone untouched. You can also now even try out the new Dashboard yourself relatively easily, though you may run into a bit of trouble if you actually want to do thing like play games online.

Continue reading Leaked Xbox 360 dashboard gets demonstrated on video

Leaked Xbox 360 dashboard gets demonstrated on video originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Kotaku  |  sourceYouTube (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

Capcom dishes the dirt on its Nintendo 3DS graphics

According to a recent Capcom investor Q&A, it looks like the company’s upcoming Nintendo 3DS games will be developed using the MT Framework — the same game engine used for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii titles. This means that graphics features like “HDR lighting, real-time color correction, self-shadowing, normal mapping, depth of field and motion blur” will be making their way to your handheld — whenever it should become available. Hit the source link to see several examples featuring the upcoming Resident Evil: Revelations (or, as it’s known in Japan, Biohazard: Revelations) and prepare to enter a virtual wonderworld of machine translated tech details regarding game development. You’re welcome.

Capcom dishes the dirt on its Nintendo 3DS graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Siliconera  |  sourceGame Watch  | Email this | Comments

Sony launches anti-Kinect attack website, yaybuttons.com

Sony’s typically the equal-opportunity offender, poking fun at everything from Wii to iPhone, but the company’s latest marketing campaign is unmistakably aimed at Microsoft’s motion-sensing peripheral. Head on over to www.yaybuttons.com to interact with a two-dimensional PlayStation Move, which will pop out a series of quotes from Kevin Butler — Sony’s fictional VP of Realistic Movements — explaining Sony’s tactile advantages over Microsoft’s Kinect. While members of the Sony Defense Force will surely eat this up in spades, the rest of us will simply enjoy this latest tussle, and go back to waiting for both companies to put their money by their oral socket and make more games worth playing.

Sony launches anti-Kinect attack website, yaybuttons.com originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Joystiq  |  sourceyaybuttons.com  | Email this | Comments

How would you change Microsoft’s new Xbox 360?

So, you didn’t wait for those forthcoming Kinect bundles to ship before picking up a new Xbox 360, huh? Good on you. Now that you’ve had all summer to break ‘er in, we’re keenly interested in knowing how exactly you — the dear consumer — would change Microsoft’s slimmer, edgier Xbox 360. Would you have crafted a more stackable case? Thrown in a Blu-ray drive for obvious reasons? Included four controllers and a game for a nominal fee? Packed more than 250GB of hard drive space? Retooled the controller at the time of launch, rather than… say, last week? Go ahead and get real in comments below. Just keep it halfway sane down there.

How would you change Microsoft’s new Xbox 360? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Sep 2010 22:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mad Catz’s Black Ops PrecisionAim gamepads and Stealth mouse hands-on

Mad Catz’ Modern Warfare 2 peripherals won’t know what hit them when Black Ops debuts this fall — the quality of the company’s gamepads has increased yet again, and of course, this year the Call of Duty-flavored lineup ships with a genuine R.A.T. mouse. We snuck down the streets of San Francisco for a top secret rendezvous to test these controllers out, and discovered a pair of the most comfortable gamepads we’ve tried for our trouble. Read our full impressions after the break — totally declassified.

Continue reading Mad Catz’s Black Ops PrecisionAim gamepads and Stealth mouse hands-on

Mad Catz’s Black Ops PrecisionAim gamepads and Stealth mouse hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Xbox 360 250GB plus Kinect bundle priced at $399 in US, £300 in UK

Microsoft has chosen the small hours of the night to announce pricing of its second Kinect bundle, which is set for launch along with the standalone and 4GB options on November 4 in the USA and November 10 across Europe. The new package throws in the 250GB slim version of the Xbox 360 to accompany the newfangled motion tracker, a spare conventional controller, and a copy of the utterly unmissable Kinect Adventures! (it has its own punctuation, it must be good). Pricing is a bit on the painful side, with Kotaku reporting a $399 figure for the US and Microsoft confirming to us a £300 sticker for this “special edition” bundle for the UK. Full press release follows after the break.

[Thanks, Ravi]

Continue reading Xbox 360 250GB plus Kinect bundle priced at $399 in US, £300 in UK

Xbox 360 250GB plus Kinect bundle priced at $399 in US, £300 in UK originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CrunchGear  |  sourceKotaku, Amazon  | Email this | Comments

Origin PC’s Big O desktop: half gaming PC, half Xbox 360, all muscle

Oh, sure — we’ve seen an Xbox 360 enclosure stuffed with x86 innards, but we can’t say we’ve ever seen anything quite like this. Gaming upstart Origin PC has just shattered every preconceived notion about its potential with the Big O, an appropriately titled luxury machine that combines a liquid-cooled gaming PC with a liquid-cooled Xbox 360 Slim. In one box. A pair of base configurations are available (though customizations are limitless), with both of ’em rigged up to run the PC and Xbox concurrently. In other words, these bad boys can actually crunch SETI@home data while you explore the vastness of Halo: Reach. The $7,669 build includes an overclocked 4.0GHz Core i7-930 CPU, Rampage III Extreme mobo, twin NVIDIA GTX480 graphics cards, 6GB of Corsair memory, a 1,500 watt power support, 12x Pioneer Blu-ray burner, two 50GB OCZ SSDs wired up as a boot drive, Windows 7 Home Premium, a liquid-cooled Xbox 360 and bragging rights the size of Texas Alaska. For those still unsatisfied, there’s a $16,999 version that’s frankly too lust-worthy to spell out here (but is in the gallery below). Hit the source link if you’re feeling ambitious, but don’t blame us for blowing your kid’s college fund in one fell swoop.

Continue reading Origin PC’s Big O desktop: half gaming PC, half Xbox 360, all muscle

Origin PC’s Big O desktop: half gaming PC, half Xbox 360, all muscle originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T technical support tool suggests Xbox 360 will bring IPTV to U-Verse households soon

Originally the fevered dream of Microsoft executives circa CES 2007, the Xbox 360 IPTV box is rapidly becoming a reality, first sneaking into Canadian carrier Telus’ Optik TV outlay and now reportedly in development at AT&T. Now, we wouldn’t have blamed you for doubting Microsoft when it briefly mentioned U-Verse subscribers would get Mediaroom functionality in their game console later this year, but it’s looking more likely now: a tipster just forwarded some legit-looking screenshots of Xbox prompts in AT&T U-Verse’s technical support database. Our source claims the Xbox is presently being tested internally with friends and family of AT&T employees, and that it’s likely only a couple of months away at this point. Not discussed: whether or not Xbox 360 will provide closed captioning for the “TV impaired.” See what IPTV on Xbox might look like in our January eyes-on.

AT&T technical support tool suggests Xbox 360 will bring IPTV to U-Verse households soon originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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