Featuring, Kinect.

As always, E3 is kicked off by gaming heavyweight, Microsoft. The conference was supposed to start at 10 a.m. PDT, but a few technical difficulties seemed to have delayed it to 10:30. No surprise there.

Call of Duty: Black Ops (Treyarch)
Anyway, on to the conference. Microsoft led off with a demo of Treyarch’s latest military first person shooter, Call of Duty: Black Ops. The demo showed off a level in which the player crawled through suffocating mole tunnels and an enemy-infested tropical jungle. At the end of the demo, the player commandeered a Hind and unleashed a swarm of missiles and rockets towards the enemies below.

Fable III (Lionhead Studios)
Afterwards, Lionhead studio head Peter Molyneaux showed off his latest project, Fable III. Molyneaux introduced a trailer that portrayed two different rulers and how their decisions (good or evil) will affect the world around them. It was rumored that Fable III will have Kinect support, but Molyneaux was not clear on that topic. Though he did say the game will launch on the Xbox 360 and PC on October 26.

Gears of War 3 (Epic Games)
Of course, what would a Microsoft conference be without Gears of War 3? Epic head Cliff Bleszinski showed off a demo of the game with three other human players. Marcus Fenix and his band of rag tag soldiers fought their way through a Locust/Lambent-infested wasteland.

Kinect (due November 4)
As for the recent naming of Microsoft’s motion controller, Kinect was their biggest focus. First off, they introduced Kinect’s basic features, from scrolling through menus, voice recognition, etc. ESPN also thought they would join in on the fun, and they’re bringing sports onto your Xbox 360 through Kinect. You can watch live streams of the World Cup or even College Football. These features and more will be available to Xbox Live gold members at “no additional cost.” The reception of course, was ecstatically received.

Next up, Kudo Tsunoda came out and presented the first 6 of 15 Kinect launch titles. Kinectimals lets you interact with a virtual pet on screen; the demos showed a young girl interacting with her virtual pet tiger, Skittles. Next was Kinect Sports. The demos shown were that of Soccer and Track & Field. Afterwards, a trailer of the rest of Kinect Sports’ activities was shown, from bowling, to table tennis, to boxing. If you didn’t get a Wii Sports vibe with that, I don’t know what else to tell you.

Up next was a kart racing game, Joyride that looked similar to ModNation Racers. Kinect Adventures was also shown, with a couple of demonstrators showcasing Reflex Ridge, in which you race or play co-op with a friend to collect pins and avoid obstacles through treacherous levels. Kudo also showed Dance Control (Harmonix), in which you mimic dance moves on screen to rack up as many points as you can. Ubisoft was also there, and a representative showed off a fitness demo of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved.

The final Kinect demos were presented by Forza developer, Turn 10 Studios. They showed off a demo of Forza Motorsport 3 running on Kinect’s features; the controls seemed sharp and the graphics look great. They did say that the game still ran at 60 frames for second, which is pretty impressive. Turn 10 also showed off another feature in which you can move around and view a car from different places and angles. There was also a technical demo of a Star Wars game that is set for release in 2011.

Xbox 360 Slim
Yes, it has been confirmed. Although they're not calling it the slim; they're just calling it 'The New Xbox 360.' Whatever it is, this new 360 version will ship as a 250gb, with a built-in, Wi-Fi version (820.11n) for faster internet connection. It will also retail at $299.99, the same price point as the original Xbox 360. Crazy, I know. But that's not all; the New Xbox 360 is available right now, as we speak.

Halo: Reach, Metal Gear Solid: Rising
Microsoft also had other games in their lineup. A short demo of Halo Reach was shown, in which a group of Spartans fought off a wave of Covenant soldiers on a smoldering battlefield. Also, Hideo Kojima was there to reveal more footage of Metal Gear Solid: Rising, which was announced exclusively for the Xbox 360 at last year’s E3. It won’t be an espionage game this time; Rising puts you in the shoes of MGS2 protagonist, Raiden, cutting his way through buildings and people alike.

Personal thoughts:
Microsoft’s intention from the start was for the conference to center around Kinect, and they were successful in pulling that off. Though I found Kinect’s facial/voice recognition and other features interesting, the way they presented everything reminded me so much of how Nintendo has been doing in the past couple of E3s. The Kinect presentation was pretty terrible and awkward, and there were many times the crowd was sort of forced to applaud.

There weren’t any more presentations in the press conference that piqued my interest, except for Gears of War 3; Halo: Reach and Black Ops don't exactly appeal to me either. Overall, Microsoft’s E3 press conference was disappointing. The Kinect stuff was intriguing, but not enough to convince me to buy that product. What audience are they supposedly catering this to?

Hopefully, Sony and Nintendo won’t be a letdown as much as Microsoft has today. I expect better things in the coming days.

Coming up:
The EA Press Conference will go live in less than 15 minutes from now. A blog summary for that will be up afterwards. Stay tuned!