Mon, Jun 04, 2012 | 20:28 BST
E3 2012: Halo 4, Splinter Cell and Lara lead MS presser
Microsoft’s E3 2012 press conference was headlined by Tomb Raider and Black Ops II gameplay as well as the first showing of Halo 4′s campaign and the announcement of Splinter Cell: Blacklist.
MS E3 2012 presser – at a glance
Call of Duty: Black Ops II gameplay was shown. Xbox 360 will have timed exclusive DLC.
Halo 4 campaign demoed.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist was confirmed and shown.
A playable section from the later part of Tomb Raider was seen, looking for all the world like Uncharted. Xbox 360 will get timed exclusive DLC.
Gears of War: Judgment was trailered.
Harmonix announced Dance Central 3. Usher played a track for it.
Madden and FIFA will now have Kinect controls. Madden’s out August 28.
Forza Horizon is releasing October 23.
Xbox Music was announced and demoed. It’s out this year for 360.
SmartGlass, a Microsoft app which syncs iOS Windows and Android tablets and phone with 360 was announced. It’s out this autumn.
Internet Explorer coming to Xbox 360 this year. It can be controlled by phones, tablets and Kinect.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 press conference in Los Angeles today was dominated by a predictable showing of strong triple-A software and the impressive announcement of SmartGlass, an app for synching mobile devices with Xbox 360 and Live.
A Halo 4 trailer kicked off the event, showing single-player action, Master Chief moving through jungle with Cortana talking in his ears.
The first showing of the game’s campaign, the demo saw Chief fight against “defence AIs” that were “definitely not Covenant” and ended up in a tense fight against a non-organic enemy. He ended up using Forerunner tech.
The plot seems to have something to do with an AI being put into service seven years ago and only having a year to live. The demo was greeted by loud cheers.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist, as expected, was confirmed with a trailer. The game’s story sees a group of nations create a blacklist, which amounts to attacking US troops. A section on the Iran-Iraq border was seen, with Sam Fisher killing, climbing and “taking out targets quickly and fluidly”.
A Kinect feature was shown, with the player saying, “Hey, you,” at the screen in order to attract an enemy. Fisher entered a heavy firefight, ordering in airstrikes using Kinect voice commands. Ubisoft described the game as “the most ambitious Splinter Cell yet,” with co-op, campaign and Spies vs Mercs. It’s out spring 2013.
It’s in the game
EA Sports boss Andy Wilson then came onto stage to confirm Kinect integration for FIFA and Madden. Players can talk to other players and even swear at the referee.
Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana showed off the Madden Kinect functionality, speaking to the game to make pre-snap calls.
Madden 2013 is out August 28.
Fable: The Journey came next with a new trailer, showing the fireball-throwing seen at Microsoft’s San Francisco Spring Showcase this year.
“Only the best games are on Xbox,” said Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Studios . “This will be the biggest year for games on Xbox.”
He showed a trailer for Gears of War: Judgment, a touch of CG showing Delta Squad in chains. It’s out “2013″. A Forza Horizon trailer followed, showing Imprezas and other road cars racing to dubstep across an island. It’s out October 23.
A string of service announcements started with confirmation that Bing voice search is to be expanded into 12 different languages this year, potentially reaching another “half a billion people”.
Nickelodeon, Paramount, Machinima and a Spanish video provider were all confirmed as new live partners. NBA and NHL programming was confirmed for Xbox 360.
Xbox Music was announced and trailered, which will add 30 million tracks to Xbox 360. It’s out this year. Nike was confirmed as a major partner for Xbox, in a collaboration described as “the future of fitness”. Nike’s Stefan Olander talking about the sports manufacturer’s digital services before announcing Nike+ Kinect Training, a system which provides a “personalised digital training experience”. You get phone updates every time you’re due a workout, and assessments every four weeks. It also hooks you up with like-minded gamers. It’s a retail product: box art was shown.
There was a nice surprise among all the predictability. Xbox Live boss Marc Whitten came out to show Xbox SmartGlass, which hooks up Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices together. You’ll be able to watch a movie on your tablet, then stop watching and start watching again at the same place on your 360. This was an impressive demo. Whitten’s phone and tablet were feeding info on Game of Thrones to him while he watched it on TV, with all devices synched.
Further, Madden was shown being controlled with a tablet, and Halo 4 Waypoint updates were seen being transferred from game to a tablet in real-time. With SmartGlass, you’ll also be able to control the 360 dashboard using your phone.
Internet Explorer was announced for Xbox 360 this year. Whitten controlled it on the screen using his voice through Kinect, playing Flash movies from the internet on his TV.
“This is the web transformed for TV,” he said.
He moved the cursor around on the screen using his phone. You can pinch and zoom on your mobile device. SmartGlass is out this autumn. Windows 8 integration was also confirmed.
Uncharted waters
Then we were back to the games. Crystal Dynamics showed Tomb Raider in playable form. It was “from later in the game,” and showed Lara using cover and her bow and arrow in a firefight. This looked very much influenced by Uncharted.
Lara was trying to find her friend, Sam, running and jumping over slat bridges and using a rope slide. She used flaming arrows to ignite enemies, swapped the bow for a shotgun and performed knife kills. There was a section in fast-flowing water where she had to dodge obstacles as she was pulled down a river.
She eventually parachuted over a cliff and glided through a forest, falling through pine trees in Rambo-esque fashion.
The first piece of Tomb Raider’s DLC will be a 360 exclusive.
Spencer came back out to announce some exclusives. Ascend New Gods from Signal Studios was shown, a fantasy action title in the vein of God of War. LocoCycle from Twisted Pixel, and Matter, from a partnership with Gore Verbinski of Pirates of the Caribbean, will both release next year.
Capcom showed a playable section of Resident Evil 6, with Leon dutifully refusing to abandon survivors and throwing grenades at the horde. The demo culminated with Leon running away while everything blew up, a helictoper crashed and Leon and companion fell into a group of zombies. Something to note: there were a bunch of QTEs in this.
Alex Ruiz from the Xbox Live team showed of Kinect Live title Wreckateer. This was shown in San Francisco earlier this year. You essentially catapult rocks at castles with your arms. It’s fun.
South Park: The RPG was also seen. This is from THQ and Obsidian. There was a trailer and some gameplay. It looked simple and funny, as you’d expect. Trey Parker and Matt Stone came out on stage and ripped the shit out of Microsoft. The crowd liked it a great deal. They said they needed the game to feel as though you were playing in an episode of South Park, so it had to have a “crappy” look. In the game, you’re the new kid in time and are trying to become the fifth boy in the group.
Harmonix announced Dance Central 3. Microsoft managed to get Usher on stage performing a track. He got a big cheer.
Don came back on with a “wow”.
“That was really great,” he said, saying the Microsoft is “ushering” in a new, golden age of entertainment.
The final game was Black Ops II, obviously. Mattrick confirmed that 360 would, again, get exclusive content. A new demo was shown, this time of gameplay. It started in an APC, with protagonist Mason protecting the president. They were driving down an LA freeway when a helicopter got rocketed, someone shouted “holy shit” and everything turned black.
Gameplay included climbing on top of vehicles and using a futuristic heavy machine gun. Chatter included “sitrep” and “RPG”. There was a sniping section involving rounds which could be charged to be powerful enough to shoot through walls.
The freeway collapsed and the demo moved to close combat in buildings and streets. This looked very much like Call of Duty, so worries the future setting would dilute the formula may well be unfounded. The fighting took place around the Staples Center in LA. A building collapsed and the president was rescued. Mason took off in a plane (an “FA38″) and protected the car driving the president, firing rockets and machine guns at enemies.
Hit this for information on the rest of E3′s Monday conferences.
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Posted in: E3 2012, Microsoft, Xbox 360
Tags: microsoft press conference e3 2012
102 comments
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#51
absolutezero
04/06/12, 6:26 pm
Now thats pretty fucking stunning.
#52
manamana
04/06/12, 6:28 pm
SmartGlass is looking absolutely amazing but why are they spoiling so much of Tomb Raider …
#53
Ireland Michael
04/06/12, 6:31 pm
*falls asleep*
#54
Patrick Garratt
04/06/12, 6:32 pm
Sorry for the formatting on the article. We’re getting hammered. Trying to sort it now.
#55
Edo
04/06/12, 6:33 pm
Tomb Raider looks spectacular!!!
#56
absolutezero
04/06/12, 6:38 pm
The pacing off this Resi gameplay is all over the fucking place.
Quick kill. Quick kill. Escape. Cut-Scene. Sliding. Door. Running away.
BAM BAM BAM BAM
Also Grenade indicators, proper third person controls and I dunno. I dunno man.
#57
MadFingerz
04/06/12, 6:40 pm
“IE for your Xbox!” Woot!!
-_-
Tomb Raider is looking damn cool indeed.
#58
Ireland Michael
04/06/12, 6:43 pm
Tomb Raider looks phenomenal, but the rest of this is dull as mud.
#59
Razor
04/06/12, 6:46 pm
Erm… Usher?
#60
Gekidami
04/06/12, 6:49 pm
Well at least journos who are there can say they saw a live Usher concert…
#61
AHA-Lambda
04/06/12, 6:49 pm
south park saves the show!
*cue usher*
FOR FUCK SAKE MICROSOFT!!!!!! ARGHHHHH!!!!!
#62
pukem0n
04/06/12, 6:49 pm
holy crap, why the fuck is Usher performing some crappy song? wtf?? just W.T.F?
#63
polygem
04/06/12, 6:51 pm
halo 4 opening was mindblowing. tomb raider was great. the rest was a huge pile of shit. right now theres usher on the stage. it can only get better. what a douche. not sure if i will survive this…just show more halo. the only reason i got a 360 these days.
#64
Razor
04/06/12, 6:53 pm
Well that was pitiful.
#65
Da Man
04/06/12, 6:55 pm
The bits of TR they showed were boring, obv it’s just for advertising. The rest is rather impressive.
Halo4 day one.
#66
absolutezero
04/06/12, 6:59 pm
BAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMM
Inception
BAAAAAAAAOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM
Kinect.
#67
ManuOtaku
04/06/12, 7:00 pm
Its already over yet?, darn i was hoping for a new killer instinct, banjo and too human games, and/or more information on alan wake 2, as much as i like halo, forza, tomb raider and gears, they need something new IMHO.
Hey and the south park game will be awasome.
#68
absolutezero
04/06/12, 7:01 pm
Explosions pew pew pew explosions. Up your arse. Go here use this. Explosions. Pew nyeaworroroeee.
Revolutions in the campaign. Choice!
Rappel and shoot the dudes or stand on the bridge and shoot…the…dudes.
#69
Gekidami
04/06/12, 7:03 pm
Its over. Well, two words come to mind:
“Filler” & “Multiplat”.
#70
polygem
04/06/12, 7:04 pm
halo 4 and tomb raider….anything else i wont need. that was a shit ms e3 presentation! halo 4 looked insaneley awesome though.
#71
triggerhappy
04/06/12, 7:04 pm
All very disappointing apart from Tomb Raider. Even RE6 was a bit meh.
#72
jdfoster00
04/06/12, 7:07 pm
AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL
#73
lexph3re
04/06/12, 7:09 pm
Welp…. That killed my E3 boner
#74
Froseidon
04/06/12, 7:09 pm
I dunno about that conference, I mean, I prefer Xbox above all but that seemed rather abysmal. Gotta admit, Usher didn’t make it better at all.
The only good parts were (in order):
- Halo 4
- Gears of War
- Splinter Cell
- Tomb Raider
The rest was shite if you ask me. I do not give a flying f*** about inter-connectivity to my phone. If I wanted that, I would have gotten a windows phone.
Also that woman with the Kinect game annoyed the living shit out of me. She was worse than the kids in 2011.
#75
Erthazus
04/06/12, 7:09 pm
GUYS, SELL YOUR PC’s because XBOX 360 HAVE INTERNET EXPLORER NOW!
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
#76
Da Man
04/06/12, 7:11 pm
Methamphetamine is bad. Don’t you ever forget that, kids.
#77
Ireland Michael
04/06/12, 7:12 pm
I love how half those game trailers were half cutscenes.
#78
Dragon246
04/06/12, 7:14 pm
Hooray!!! Now you can use IE on xbox to download firefox for xbox!!!
#79
Christopher Jack
04/06/12, 7:15 pm
Snooze fest, the streaming app intrigues me & I’m ofc interested in Halo 4, but everything else? The fuck?
#80
Gekidami
04/06/12, 7:17 pm
Why happened to the Crytek Kinect game? Considering the amount of barrel scraping MS did, i assume this game is either canned or on hold?
#81
daytripper
04/06/12, 7:24 pm
In terms of gaming announcements that was piss poor, some are of the opinion they are keeping a lot of stuff back for next gen, I am not that confident. For me the reasons to keep a 360 when I have a ps3 and 3DS are diminishing.
#82
FuriousMachine
04/06/12, 7:31 pm
I’m ready to call the E3 winner. Didn’t see Nintendos pre-E3 thingie and, obviously, the other press briefings haven’t even started yet, so on the basis of only having seen the MS presser, I can declare a winner.
A little bit about me (so you get the context). I’m a 37 year old “core” gamer and own an Xbox 360, a PS3, a PC built for gaming, a Wii (connected but effectively discontinued after I got House of the Dead: Overkill for the PS3 with a Move-gun), a PS2 (basement) and an original Xbox (also basement).
I suffer from shooter-fatigue (FPS and 3PS) so the bookending of Halo 4 and BLOPS2 gave me nothing. GoW:Judgement also failed to inspire as I’m still trying to get through GoW2. Resi 6 seemed to take the series into the action/shooter range where any sense of suspense seems to have been replaced by action set-pieces/cutscenes and QTEs. No biggie, the only Resi title I actually ever played was Resi 4 on the Wii, so I’m not heavily invested.
Furthermore, I live in Norway and have a Kinect that is gathering dust due to the fact that my living room is too small. The Nyko add-on helps a bit with the Golf on Kinect Sports 2, but everything requiring any sort of precision is out the window. I have yet to be able to start Gunstringer because it’s impossible with the lack of precision Nyko brings to the table. Additionally, no voice recognition (I speak English quite well and with a solid American accent to boot, I am told, but alas, I’m not allowed to converse with my XBox until it understands my native language which I loathe to use with my games and other software anyway).
The cool new apps? Not available in Norway and probably won’t be for quite some time.
So, Kinect and Apps: Does not apply.
Smart Glass and IE: Potential! As long as web-browsing can be done with Smart Glass alone (not sure, streaming died at that point) and isn’t reliant on Kinect Voice Recognition, that’s cool. Smart Glass could, with proper implementation, make Nintendo look a bit silly with their proprietary tablet-controller, as the potential here is to make any tablet and smartphone just as powerful. Will it, though? Probably not. When did they first start touting Live Anywhere (which this effectively is)? 5 years ago?
The new IPs could be fun, but didn’t really excite. I was reminded of Ryse. Trot out a new IP and never hear from it again (until next-gen, possibly?)
The new Tomb Raider and Splinter Cell looked good! Some excitement there for me! (But where’s Ironside?!)
So all in all, close to 90 minutes that for me and my gaming profile made me question my Xbox future. Thankfully, there’s plenty of Xbox history yet to be enjoyed. As soon as I hit “Post Comment” I will dive into Lost Odyssey.
So why am I willing to declare this an E3 winner?
Trey Parker & Matt Stone
All your arguments are invalid
#83
manamana
04/06/12, 7:32 pm
Yes, its confirmed: Microsoft only has Halo4 as a game and SmartGlass as a gimmick. What a letdown. The rest is up to Sony now.
#84
Monk
04/06/12, 7:35 pm
” Hooray!!! Now you can use IE on xbox to download firefox for xbox!!!
”
Craaaaaaaaaaaaaap, that`s awesome
.
Really, what a crap conference that Halo which
I don`t really like, save it for a little, TR and
RE is not exclusive so whatever !
#85
OlderGamer
04/06/12, 7:36 pm
Meh. More shooting, there is a shocker.
I am guessing if you went into this a MS fan, nothing changed. And if you tend to like other things, you still do. Is the TR game exclusive? And how exciting to have Kinect do more, ‘eh? I kid. IE thing could be nice, we will see what kind of choping they have to do to it(But kind of confirms IE for Next gen too). More service choices for XBL is a good thing too, paying for each service, not so much. But hey thats the way it works.
Next.
#86
G1GAHURTZ
04/06/12, 7:39 pm
xbox-glass looked cool!
#87
Erthazus
04/06/12, 7:41 pm
@85,
Tomb Raider is not exclusive of course.
#88
Gekidami
04/06/12, 7:43 pm
@81
We’ve heard that kind of wishful thinking in the past already. I remember their E3 about 2 years ago where the excuse was “They dont announce games long before they come out”. Yet throughout the year up in till the next E3, nothing. And last years E3 they announced stuff that has still yet to see the light of day. So MS apparently ‘holding back’ for the next gen? Yeah, i dont really buy it.
I think the real horror of all of this is that outside of E3, MS really dont announce games. Unlike Sony, they dont hold random events throughout the year where they invite the press to see a new games. So this is pretty much every exclusive for the remainder of 2012 and a good part of 2013; Gears of War: Judgement, Halo 4 (which they announced a year ago), three other IP’s that by all accounts sound like they’re going to be Live games, and Live games.
Theres no real point in even acting surprised, fact is, this is been par for the course with the 360 for at least the last 3 years now.
#89
Da Man
04/06/12, 7:51 pm
Fact is: the video games I like are good, the ones I dislike are bad.
Is angry video game nerd posting on vg247?
#90
Patrick Garratt
04/06/12, 7:56 pm
OK. We’re approaching normal service again. Sorry for the slowness. We’re getting absolutely battered. This article’s been edited now. Still working on it, though.
#91
Lewis247
04/06/12, 8:05 pm
Halo 4 demo was a total treat, I want it so bad! Tomb raider looks absolutely stunning, can’t wait.
I thought to myself ok, kinect stuff isn’t interesting but nothing TOO embarassing so far… Then, Usher came on.
NOOOOOOO.JPG
They just had to ruin everything.
#92
Ireland Michael
04/06/12, 8:10 pm
@91 It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had been able to dance…
…or sing.
#93
Dragon246
04/06/12, 8:23 pm
We have at least now have an unanimous winner for the coveted “Wooden spoon” of E3.
#94
polygem
04/06/12, 8:27 pm
@91: i´d sign that.
@92: LOL. indeed.
#95
Dragon246
04/06/12, 8:36 pm
“even swear at the referee”
And get red carded for free. A really well thought implementation of kinect I must say.
“Only the best games are on Xbox”
Looks like the only time in this conference he forgot about kinect.
“This will be the biggest year for games on Xbox”
Yeah sure. This is better than NO games at all. Sony and nintendo fans would vandalise their conference if their show was this piss-poor.
#96
Dimaco
04/06/12, 8:45 pm
Hell, didn’t watch the whole thing, but from the comments it looks like this wasn’t exactly a big deal… can’t wait to see what Sony comes up with now!
#97
daytripper
04/06/12, 8:55 pm
@88 I am surprised actually, a little, I expected one full retail big game to be announced but more fool me I suppose. I honestly believe they wont announce a new system next year, I think they will milk this kinect/apps/give em a halo,gears,fable,forza for 360 route for as long as possible.
#98
polygem
04/06/12, 9:15 pm
@97: yea, but i really doubt they´ll get away with it again next year. halo 4 is amazing. that saved their butts. but next year they have to show next gen halo´s, gears´,forzas´ etc… or they will get lynch mobbed….
#99
daytripper
04/06/12, 9:22 pm
@98 I think you will get a forza 5 on 360, gears on 360, halo dlc on 360. Dunno, I am not as passionate as I once was about games, something is missing, would love either ms, sony or nintendo to give me that passion back.
Must say Halo4 looked good and some of the third party stuff was good, Tomb Raider especially (she looks like Cheryl Cole yum) but nothing to make me really excited.
#100
polygem
04/06/12, 9:24 pm
yep. same here. the magic is gone.
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