Xbox360 Spring Showcase 2008

[N4rc0ticZ]

Microsoft Opening Up Lips (And More) Tomorrow?

Over the weekend, a nosy NeoGAFer poked around one of Microsoft's press asset resources, digging up a product that goes by the name (or codename) "Lips." What is Lips, exactly? We won't know officially until, I'm guessing 8 or 9 AM Pacific time tomorrow morning, but Microsoft news breakin' blog 8bitjoystick says Lips for the Xbox 360 is not a game, but an accessory.

Lips, according to 8bitjoystick, is vaguely described as having "something to do with voice communications" but is also speculated to possibly be a hardware accessory used in a music title like Rock Band or SingStar.

The mystery accessory is said to be separate from the rumored waggle wand that Microsoft is supposedly showing off at its San Francisco area event, but details beyond that are scant. Sadly, NeoGAF is currently down, so you won't be able to enjoy the rampant speculation (or Kotaku adoration) there for the time being.

Check in with us early tomorrow morning for more details.

 

[zeaLoT]

 

[Spitz_pass_auf]

Fable 2 sieht nach ner Menge Spaß aus mal schauen was am Ende bei raus kommt. 8)

Thought it would be best to keep everything in the same topic, so here we go:

So the embargo is finally up. Last week a bunch of journalist saw the game at Lionhead in Guildford.

The build we saw was from the 7th of may. The game is content complete and about 5000 bugs from completion.

We were shown the magic system, a major plot point when you are a kid, some adult parts and I got hands on with the co-op part (local only, so far. Online announcement could come soon).

New stuff:

Mini map is dead. Peter hates it. So he made a "bread crump trail". Which is a golden line on the ground that will tell you which direction to go. It works kinda like a GPS system, so it will change if you go another direction, and will guide you in the right direction.

Magic system: You can either do a focused on one person attack, or a ranged attack. You can build up your attack in five levels. These five levels can be combined, so you can have level 1 be a fire spell, and then it builds up and adds level 2, which can be a slow spell, and so on.

There will be 8 different spells in the game.

You can buy every single house in the game. Each house will unlock something new. Either a sidequest, item or a skill

The game is 20-30 times larger then Fable 1.

The weather is completely dynamic, and will change as time progress. There will be different seasons.

Cutscenes are somewhat interactive. You can use the d-pad to do different gestures, and they can change the outcome of conversations. It's not on the scale of Mass Effect, but it can be done so you have some interactivity with the game world.

Peter wanted a sex minigame in there, but they had to drop it, due to the nature of the content. Now the screen just goes black, and your hear some moaning. And yes, you can have unprotected sex.

The female character also came close to being cut. But the female designers on the game wanted her in, so they made it happen.

There is three more Fable games planned. Lionhead is currently working on Fable 2 and a new project. The Black & White studio is no more.


I also had a talk with him, about videogames and that stuff. And he thinks that GTA4 is the absolute benchmark of how you can do story in videogames. And with Fable 2 he wants to make people attached to their character, and especially the dog.

He talked about how he was flirting with a girl, and her husband came by. And the husband became so pissed, he began kicking your dog. And Peter actually felt bad for flirting with the girl. He wants gamers to feel like he did.

Feel free to ask any questions, I'll try to answer as much as I can.

 

[klobrille]

Sind die zu blöd zum Bilder komprimieren? ;-) Viel zu extrem komprimiert.

Aber es lässt sich erahnen, dass es hübsch aussieht.

 

[klobrille]

Aus dem GAF (woher auch sonst? ):



I can confirm the existence of a new Xbox accessory codenamed : Lips

A couple months ago I got a hold of a treasure trove of information straight from the internal working of the engineering team at Xbox. I learned a heck of a lot what was really going on with the Red Ring of Death, New Xbox 360 motherboard designs and I learned about three accessories that they are working on.

Newton
Lips
Radon iv

******* has a post up about how the dudes over at NeoGaf have found that Microsoft is scheduled to show off something called Lips tomorrow. Now that matches up with the reports that I’ve seen on the accessories development report coming out of the hardware team at Xbox.

Lips : I really don’t know too much about what it is going to be. I suspect that it is going to be a voice communication device and possible voice recognition in games.

Newton : Newton is the Wiimote clone flying mouse that is going to bring the waggle willies to the Xbox.

Radon iv : We don’t know to much about it but I suspect that it is a cost cutting engineering revision to the Xbox wireless controller. So there might be a price cut coming for the wireless game pad once this is out. The “iv” part sounds like a cost cutting revision.

So I don’t have an invitation to Microsoft Gamerday 08 in San Fransisco so I’ll be refreshing my web browser to find out just what the heck the Xbox team is going to show off tomorrow.

Hey Xbox360Fanboy.com! Update :
Lips is a codename for a piece of hardware that is going to have something to do with voice communications. The reason why I did not mention it before is that I was not sure what exactly it was but when ******* and NeoGAF broke word of it being shown tomorrow I just wanted raise my hand and say that I knew that it is a piece of hardware too.

Update 2 : Or it might be a microphone for a singing game like Rockband, Karaoke Revolution and Singstar. I do know that Lips is a separate accessory project from the "Newton" wand.

 

[Torrod]

"We don’t know to much about it..."

Pah. Albernes gerede! Und Falsch obendrein.

 

[Spitz_pass_auf]

Banjo (slated for November):
- Building vehicles is basically like playing with LEGO. You can <i>always</i> jump in and out of the vehicle editor and come right back to the game with the new design.
- Parts are easily placed and moved around. You don't have to worry about connecting the motor with the wheels for example. Just place everything so they stick together and don't get in the way.
- Vehicle designs can play a large role in missions. We saw one where you had to collect coconuts from a field and got a small truck that could suck them up. Unfortunately you couldn't fit all the coconuts in the truck and had to back and deliver them in a large barrel. We were then shown how you could create a helicopter with a hook, that could pick up this large barrel, fly to the coconut field and fly low to scoop the coconuts in the barrel.
- Physics are awesome in this game and everywhere! With one design I placed the foot-in-a-box weapon behind a propella, and when I tried to use it, the foot/boot couldn't get past the propella... well, until I used it enough times to actually kick the propella off the vehicle!
- Pixel art... imagine the possibilities (Rare already had an example of this, paying homage to a certain plumber)
- Multiplayer is great fun with the ability to either chose from pre-fabricated or own vehicle designs. It still needs some polish here and there, but showed great promise.

VP2 (slated for September):
- I will only touch on one feature here, as GI already touched on many of the more traditional improvements. This feature is extremely cool though, in two ways.
1. VP2 uses the Vision Camera in combination with physical cards sorta like Eye of Judgement. It basically scans a small code on the card, when it's being held up in front of the camera, and this can both insert custom designed pinatas, unlock buildings or abilities, change the weather and many other things. We were told how Rare had designed a moose that got a big, red nose only around christmas time... and this could be passed around with these cards.
2. So the game also got a photo mode. Cool, but that's not the best! This photo mode is able to interpret the pictures and create the above-mentioned code based on the picture. Basically, you will have a card generator available on the internet! Imagine this: you have created this really cool pinata and instead of the tiresome task of sending it only to selected friends on Live, you can take a picture of it, get the code/card generated and share it on a forum. Instantly everyone will be able to get the pinata in their game and since the camera can also read from LCD screens, ipods, zunes etc., there is little to no hassle. Now THAT'S sharing!

Ich werde gerade etwas kirre Rare scheint wirklich zu Delivern und das MS Lineup für dieses Jahr wird von Minute zu Minute interessanter.

 

[finley]

Muss echt sagen das ganze liegt jetzt schon über meinen Erwartungen

 

[Lankwitzer]

hört sich beides sehr innovativ an (vor allem vp 2)

 

[klobrille]

NeXuSDK, I have question about Banjo, did you find Banjo fun and what was fun about it?

Did I find it fun? Me and colleague haven't stopped thinking about it since we played it. It was extremely fun being able to create your own vehicles however you wanted it and play around with them. Just that in itself. It works so great! Add balloons and it will start to float. Add wings and you can actually steer in the air and fly around. Add inflatable balls and you won't sink when landing on water. Add a propella and you got propulsion in the water. Everything makes sense and work exactly how you think they will.

Now take that concept into multiplayer...

Klingt doch sehr euphorisch ;-) Sehr schön.


Ich würde mich so extrem für Rare freuen, wenn das Spiel gut wird, richtig viel Spaß macht und auch in Sachen Verkaufszahlen ein bisschen erfolgreich läuft!

 

[Spitz_pass_auf]

Bleibt schon mal eins festzuhalten das MS Lineup für die zweite Jahreshälfte ist auf alle Fälle bunter und vielseitiger als viele es vermutet hätten. Die Rare Spiele, Too Human, Fable 2 und Gears 2 dazu noch dieses Ninja Blade (vermutlich ein Spiel von From Software ) dann noch Scene It 2 und was auch immer Lips ist. Dazu kommt dann noch das Splinter Cell ich würde sagen da ist für jeden was dabei.

 

[klobrille]

Killer Instinct 3?
Scheint eine Art "interne Anweisung" bei Rare zu sein ;-)

Macht daraus was ihr wollt.

Zuerst die Weihnachtskarte mit "KI3" darauf - jetzt das. Verdächtig.

"Fotograf":

Personally, I think it was some kind of joke. No word was spoken about it, I was only there to see Banjo and VP and that's what the NDA covered. As I said, make of the picture what you will (I don't think it confirms anything), but I just had to share this with gaf

Macht euch also nicht zuviel Hoffnung.

*UPDATE*
Hat sich erledigt. War nur ein Joke von Rare.

 

[Torrod]

Was jetzt noch fehtl ist die Ankündigung eines direkten Killzone2 konkurrenten.

 

[klobrille]

Bleibt schon mal eins festzuhalten das MS Lineup für die zweite Jahreshälfte ist auf alle Fälle bunter und vielseitiger als viele es vermutet hätten. Die Rare Spiele, Too Human, Fable 2 und Gears 2 dazu noch dieses Ninja Blade (vermutlich ein Spiel von From Software ) dann noch Scene It 2 und was auch immer Lips ist. Dazu kommt dann noch das Splinter Cell ich würde sagen da ist für jeden was dabei.

Wie kannst du nur Halo Wars vergessen? :-D

 

[Spitz_pass_auf]

Wie kannst du nur Halo Wars vergessen? :-D

Oops ja ich verdränge RTS grundsätzlich ich habe auch Alan Wake vergessen aber da glaubt eh keiner das es dieses Jahr noch kommt oder. :-?

 

[Coda]

Ich kann mich noch so gut erinnern an "Microsoft hat sein ganzes Pulver 2007 verschossen!". ;-)

Viva Pinata 2 und Banjo 3 klingen sehr interessant. Zusammen mit all den andere Krachern kann das imo an 2008 anschließen und gut mithalten - was ja keiner glauben wollte. Gut, wirklich beurteilen kann man das erst wenn das Jahr vorüber ist.

edit: Danke, Torrod. ;-)

 

[Torrod]

Ich kann mich noch so gut erinnern an "Microsoft hat sein ganzes Pulver 2008 verschossen!". ;-)

Viva Pinata 2 und Banjo 3 klingen sehr interessant. Zusammen mit all den andere Krachern kann das imo an 2008 anschließen und gut mithalten - was ja keiner glauben wollte. Gut, wirklich beurteilen kann man das erst wenn das Jahr vorüber ist.

Sie meinen sicherlich 2007!?

 

[klobrille]

Sie meinen sicherlich 2007!?

In meiner Welt haben wir 2008

 

[Torrod]

In meiner Welt haben wir 2008

Es geht ja nicht um das, was ist, sondern um das, was war. Oder so

 

[Hellfrog]

banjo 3 hyped mich fast so sehr wie too human, und das is ja mein most wanted 2008 ^^

wenn jetzt noch was zu infinite undiscovery rauskommt geh ich durch die decke