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The New Xbox 360

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The all new Xbox 360!

The all new Xbox 360!

The new Xbox 360 landed on singapore shores mid-July this year. One would ask: What’s new about it? Well first thing you’ll notice is its slick new design. Its slimmer and comes in a glossy black finish. Its absolutely gorgeous. That green glow of the power button against that glossy black finish makes you think its powered by kryptonite. Its really quite a looker and will send a gamer’s heart a flutter, especially an Xbox 360 owner. Microsoft should have made this glossy black finish standard on the old (read:original) Xbox 360. I’m sure there are a lot of original Xbox 360s out there that are now more of the color beige than white.

The new Xbox 360 is more than a looker. It now comes with a 250GB hard drive. That’s more than enough for downloading and storing games, game add-ons and more. The new Xbox 360 is also “whisper quiet” as stated in their ad. I don’t know about you but I don’t really find the original Xbox 360 noisy unless its right beside when you’re playing. You couldn’t here it over the sound of gunfire (in a video game that is haha). Anyway quiet is good.

Now you’re wondering is that it? Of course not. I think one of the more exciting things about the new Xbox 360 besides its looks is that it now has a built-in Wi-Fi. Yeeeeeey!!! No more wires! When connecting to Xbox Live that is. But what puts the “new” in the new Xbox 360 is that it’s Kinect ready.

Kinect ready? Yup, Kinect ready. It basically transforms your body movement into game play. It’s similar to the Wii and Playstation Move. But what makes the Kinect different is you don’t use any controllers. YOU ARE the controller. More specifically your body movements control the game. Isn’t that exciting?! Sure you’ll feel a little silly at first. It will feel like the first time you talked on you’re mobile phone using a bluetooth headset. But hey, that means no controllers flying out of your hands and hitting someone or your much loved TV. The Kinect device is sold separately and will be available in November with a slew of kinect games of course.

Editor’s note: For those who don’t know Kinect, check out the video on kinect below.

One major thing missing with this new Xbox 360 is a blu-ray drive. I would have thought they would have incorporated this already with the new Xbox. The Playstation had this for quite some time now. Anyway it still is primarily a gaming device, and blu-ray has not catched-up with the masses yet. Besides, a blu-ray drive will certainly up the price of the new Xbox 360.

Now that you’re familiar with the new Xbox360, the question is should I buy one? The simple answer is no. This still feels like the old Xbox 360 but with the bells and whistles. That’s why the name remains the same, except with the word “new”.  You can still play the new games with your old Xbox 360, even the new Kinect games, but you’ll need a separate power supply for the Kinect device. But if you want to jump in to motion-controlled gaming or your Xbox 360 really feels old, by all means yes. I just wonder if you bought one, after a year would you still call it the “new” Xbox 360? hmmm….

I think they’ve come full circle with the name Xbox 360 (pun intended).  If you do intend to buy the new Xbox 360 and the Kinect device, just a word of caution, don’t let the neighbors see you when you’re playing 😀

Gambit

Game Tech news

Will PS Move change the way we play games?

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The video below shows the possible future games we could be seeing with the all  new PS move due released on the 15th of September in Singapore!

I like the chameleon demo (3:05) where the person ‘moves’ around the tree branches as a chameleon. The movement looks intuitive to me and is definitely novel. The other demo at 4:47 is the ability of PS Move to create the skeleton for the upper body movement. However, how far would game developers be able to make full use of this technology is still pretty much unknown. A point to note too is that  in some of the demo, there is a need for two PS Move controllers. This mean that Sony may have a problem with pricing for the upcoming war with Microsoft Kinect which needs only a single Kinect Sensor Device.

Also few game titles have been announced so far that make use of the PS Move interface such as Little Big Planet 2 and Sorcery. However, not all of these games required PS Move. Some of which is PS Move Featured meaning having the PS Move controller is optional.

With all the marketing hype about the PS Move, (Sony even engaged some kawaii girls to promote PS Move, see video below), I was contemplating whether to get one myself so I went online to look at the games offered for PS Move. Sadly, none of them prove to be promising enough and I began to wonder whether PS Move is really going to change the way we play games.

I was at Comex today and chanced upon a demo of PS Move! Although I didn’t get to play it, the demo was not really inspiring and did not entice me to pre-order from the booth.

 

The reason is that the two games I saw were unimpressive and looked like a Wii game to me. The first game was “Start The Party!” where I saw a kid swiping flies with the PS Move controller. The game seems so Wii-like and uninteresting. Perhaps it can keep your kids entertain for a while. Sony’s attempt at entering the market cannot depend on game like this and they would have to find game developers who can make use of PS Move to make novel family-oriented games.

The other game I saw was called “Kung Fu Rider”. Basically it is a game where you control a guy on an office chair cruising  down the street of perhaps HongKong (judging from the background). The player has to keep shaking the controller up and down for the person to move. Other than the wacky expressive character in the game, I feel that this game is again too Wii-like for my taste.

Anyway the pre-order was sold out! Wow…Singaporean sure have the money!

To sum it up, PS Move needs a breakthrough game that can utilize the new controller in a way we’ve never seen before. It should be able to change the way we perceive game playing and truly bring a new experience to the gamers. I would patiently await the day for this game before jumping onto the bandwagon!