Features// E3 2010: Inside the Kinect Event

Wow, what a day! E3 doesn't even start for another36 hours and I'm already pretty well stunned. Without saying anything of the actual content, I knew going into a video game press event with the tag line 'As imagined by Cirque de Soleil' was going to be a unique experience... but Wow!

Crazy space-ponchos, giant spinning transforming rooms, a huge spherical motorized 360 logo the size of a Volkswagen, a lifesize elephant puppet, families on a flying coaches, and did I mention it started of with us, the viewers, climbing out of a television set and into someone's living room?

The evening started of with a nice long stand in line, as most of these things do. This allowed a lot of time to sit and speculate about what we where about to see. My cohort and I were instead obsessed with figuring out if the green bracelets (the ones we had) were better or worse than the orange ones we saw a lot of people wearing. Turns out it was a very subjective decision.

After entering the venue and being instructed in the ways of wearing the Microsoft space-poncho, we where led through various corridors that all seemed to end with us literally climbing though an opening the size of a very large television (I didn't have anybody either elderly or obese with me so I'm not sure how they would have handled it) and into a living room. Once in, a pretend family greeted us and then sent us on our merry way.

Shortly thereafter we emerged, to our surprise, on the main floor of a rather large auditorium. Our first instinct was to sit right down but we were quickly informed that that was not to be the case. We, as well as probably a thousand others, where to stand about on the floor. Not that we hadn't been standing for nearly two hours already... but hey, what's a few more hours in the great scheme of things?

As we stood about admiring the large projections in the air above us of Xbox 360 avatars in a jungle setting (and wondering WTF was going on) we where quickly accosted by a pack of aboriginal/Lord of the Flies-looking Cirque 'freques'. They pantomimed a lot, lead the crowd about the place and posed for publicity photos; they did an excellent job of startling the heck out of more than a few people. Eventually they began doing all kinds of stunning acrobatics, not too dissimilar from what you can find street performers doing in most city parks when the rest of the world is working, but this was classier. After a good hour of watching this go on and doing our best to not have to interact with them too much the show itself finally began.

A couch holding a mother, father and son was lowered from its position high above the proceedings and the young boy climbed off it. He was carried by a group of 'Cirques' to the stage in the front. The “stage”, as it were, was a steep incline (about 40 degrees), with plants lining either side and a series of four giant boulders going up it. In front of each boulder hung a screen displaying an odd selection of Xbox titles. (The Maw, Kameo, and I don't know what the other was.)

The boy climbed each boulder, pulled out his standard wireless controller and mastered each game before reaching the top where he met “Kinect”.

It spoke to him – I have no idea if that's actually part of the product - and he then began to play with his Xbox avatar in real time without use of a controller. At least that's was the impression, it was in fact obviously choreographed.

“In the future interfaces will be human, and it is the computer that will have to adapt”. This was the gist. It may not be the EXACT quote - bear in mind that there was no recording of any kind.

Once the kid became familiar with the basics of Kinect, the final screen pulled back and a huge spinning box was revealed. This was actually a living room filled with a family; a girl who walked on the ceiling, and two other girls who floated eerily into the room sideways then floated back out. This was, I divined, intended to represent live multiplayer, but it was just odd to watch. The rest of the show consisted of these people all playing different games alone or together to show off some of the line-up we can expect this fall:

The Games
Sports: they demoed a sports game. Much like all other motion sports game it was a compilation of mini-games. It was, however, put in an arena to make the games like Olympic-style events with a score tracked between teams all the while. Running games seemed to work like the old power-pad track and field. Soccer and tennis where much like Wii tennis as the players didn't seem to control their characters' motion, just their arms. Bowling seemed very solid and even had the ball crack the lane when it was thrown up instead of released smoothly.