Xbox Living

EA DICE has announced that it will give players who order Medal of Honor‘s Limited Edition will get access to the beta of the highly-anticipated Battlefield 3.

Battlefield has seen three Xbox 360 titles, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Battlefield: Bad Company, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.  Modern Combat was a scaled-back version of the PC’s Battlefield 2. This will mark the first time that a flagship Battlefield title will come to a console.

DICE did include a little gotcha in the announcement. The offer is only valid if Battlefield 3′s beta is available within a year from Medal of Honor’s release. You’ll also need to be over eighteen to be eligible, and Xbox Live subscribers must have a Gold account to play.

As for Medal of Honor itself, having tried out the Beta I find it fun, but a little too much like Call of Duty. Now, that’s great if you’re a Call of Duty fan — but I was hoping that it would be blended with a little bit of the Battlefield feel.

Medal of Honor will be out on October 12 in North America, and October 15 in Europe. No details yet on Battlefield 3.

At Microsoft’s pre-E3 media briefing, the company unveiled its audio-video motion-tracking controller, previously known as Project Natal. The new control system for the Xbox 360 is now known as Kinect.

Kinect sits in front of you and responds to your body’s movements and vocal commands to control games, chat and media features within the Xbox 360.

A number of Kinect games were announced. Kinect Sports is obviously an answer to Wii Sports, but does offer the improvements that come with the full motion tracking of Kinect. Kinectamals, meanwhile, gives kids a virtual pet that they can play with. The animals respond to kids’ vocal commands and movements. Kinect Adventures, meanwhile, puts you on a moving platform where you need to move your entire body to dodge obstacles and collect tokens.

MTV Games and Harmonix are bringing Dance Central to Kinect, a dancing game that removes the pads of DDR and replaces them with full body tracking. Ubisoft also showed off a Kinect title. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved will provide a workout that watches your entire body’s movements to provide tips on improving your form. A new Forza racing game was also announced, one to drive simply by placing their hands at a ten-and-two position.

Last but not least in terms of games, a new Star Wars game was announced from Microsoft and LucasArts, showing off both lightsaber battling and force moves that are done without a controller in hand.

Microsoft showed off the communications benefits of Kinect, with a webcam chat that took place between two Kinect users. Besides the obvious voice and video chat, people can watch movies, sports or news content together while in video chat. Also a neat feature: Kinect follows you around the room, panning the video so that you don’t wander off screen.

Zune features are being extended in the Xbox 360 with Kinect. Now, audio and video can be selected, played and controlled using Kinect. Simple gestures can be used to move between tracks or pause/fast-forward/rewind videos. Alternatively, voice commands like “Xbox Pause” and “Xbox Rewind” can be used to control media.

Alongside the new Zune media controls is an announced partnership with ESPN to bring sports coverage. Recorded and live games will be streamed to the Xbox 360 console through the service, which will be available to Xbox Live Gold subscribers at no additional cost. A neat feature: say “Xbox Replay” to get your own instant replays on demand. (As a Canadian, I’ve got to say the noticeable absence of NHL content was a bit of a let-down — though I’m not sure if the ESPN coverage will even be available outside of the U.S.)

Microsoft’s Kinect will be launching on November 4. 15 Kinect titles will be available at launch.

Changes are underway at Microsoft as both Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft’s entertainment & devices division, and J. Allard, CTO of the same group, are leaving the Xbox team.

Robbie Bach has been with Microsoft for 22 years, and has most recently headed up the division that manages the Xbox line. Bach is retiring from Microsoft, with the aim of leaving on a high note. His recent projects, such as Project Natal, are promising upcoming releases. Bach will stay on with Microsoft until the fall.

Meanwhile, J. Allard, who co-created the original Xbox and was a big part of the Xbox 360 team, is also making his departure from Microsoft. Allard has recently been missing from much of the Xbox 360 news scene, reportedly on sabbatical. Allard has spent 15 years with Microsoft, and will continue to serve as an advisor to Steve Ballmer.

Both roles have been instrumental in the creation of the Xbox 360 platform, and no doubt Microsoft will have a bit of struggling to do as they reorganize their Xbox division and look to fill the void left by these departures.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Oh, the wit. The wit of that headline. Superb.

Anyways, on September 14, 2010, Halo: Reach will be released everywhere except Japan, where the game will be released on September 15.

Chances are, it’ll sell well. In the 18 days that the Halo: Reach beta was live, 2.7 million players logged in and spent 16 million hours playing the game. People who bought Halo 3: ODST were invited to participate in the beta.

Halo: Reach is Bungie’s last Halo game, as the company is moving on to work on a new series with Activision. More on Reach as it comes.

Happy Star Wars Day! Oh, puns. You make life so beautiful.

Anyways, I’m not just here to assault your intelligence with something you’ve probably already heard today. There’s actual news. And it concerns Star Wars. That is, The Force Unleashed II has been dated.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is now due out October 26.

What’s more, I actually got around to updating the release schedule with current Xbox 360 release dates, so you can see when The Force Unleashed II comes out, if your memory is so bad that you’ve already forgotten, and you can see when other things come out, too.

This is my bestest writing ever!

How did this happen?

Activision recently fired some two execs from Infinity Ward for supposed “breaches of contract and insubordination”, and now word comes in that Activision is taking the Call of Duty line away from the company, who developed the series from day one. Infinity Ward will continue to support the hugely-successful Modern Warfare 2, providing new map packs for the game. Not sure what to make of this, but rumour has it they will not develop any new titles in the Call of Duty franchise.

Instead, Sledgehammer Games, made up of former EA employees, will take over the series. Their first Call of Duty title is planned for Fall 2001.

Meanwhile, my preferred FPS series, Battlefield, released its latest title, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 yesterday. Bad Company 2 is another step forward for the Battlefield franchise and puts EA’s Digital Illusions CE in a position to take on Call of Duty. With this news, it looks like the franchise is vulnerable.  Move in for the kill, DICE.