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HBO Go app arrives on Xbox One
HBO launched its HBO Go app on Xbox One today, finally allowing owners to stream episodes from shows like True Detective and Game of Thrones. The network also offers a number of films, such as its documentary on gaming addiction, Love Child. The app is Kinect compatible, so viewers can navigate the network's streaming selections with their voice or gestures. HBO's app was one of 35 announced for Microsoft's platform in June that are expected to launch by the end of the year. Of course, HBO Go is available to those with a subscription; stand-alone streaming subscriptions for HBO will first be available in 2015. The app also requires authentication with an eligible TV provider, a list of which can be found on Microsoft's announcement page. [Image: HBO]
Skrillex, Coldplay headline Fantasia: Music Evolved DLC
Harmonix revealed a slate of DLC tracks it has in store for its Kinect-powered Xbox One rhythm game Fantasia: Music Evolved, with Skrillex & Alvin Risk's "Try It Out," Soundgarden's "Spoonman," and Coldplay's "Paradise" premiering via Xbox Live today. 18 downloadable tracks will join Fantasia's catalog by the end of January, mixing classics like The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" and Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House" with newer fare like Justin Beiber's "As Long As You Love Me" and Maroon 5's "Lucky Strike." Add-on tracks are priced at $1.99 apiece. A list of all current and upcoming DLC for Fantasia: Music Evolved is after the break below. [Image: Disney / Harmonix]
Xbox discounts prepped for Microsoft Store's Black Friday
It's happening. The Microsoft Store's initial list of Black Friday deals is live, featuring Xbox One and 360 consoles and video games on sale starting November 27 at 12AM ET. During the sale, you can grab the following Xbox bundles at as-yet-undisclosed discounts: the Xbox One Assassin's Creed: Unity bundle with Kinect (currently $450), the limited edition Xbox One Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare bundle without Kinect (currently $450), or a Kinect-less Xbox One Assassin's Creed: Unity bundle (currently $350). Xbox One games that will be on sale include Sunset Overdrive, Forza Horizon 2, Watch Dogs, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition. For Xbox 360, you should be able to snag Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Sniper Elite 3 and Thief, among others on sale. If any of these items were on your holiday wish list, maybe hold out a little while longer to see how much these bells can jingle. [Image: Microsoft Store]
Making music in a Kinect-powered sandbox (video)
Tucked away under a tent at Expand 2014 was perhaps the coolest exhibition on the show floor: Sand Noise Device, a literal interactive sandbox experience. No, this isn't a new Grand Theft Auto; it's powered by hacked gaming tech, though, including an Xbox 360 Kinect sensor and a PlayStation Eye camera. Watching it in action immediately brought memories of Xbox 360 classic Geometry Wars to mind, actually. A ring radiates out from a center origin point, and when it hits the glowing, multicolored pucks (that are tracked for position by the PS Eye), a series of particles start shooting outward.
John Lewis brings Monty the penguin to life with help from Microsoft and Google
Every year, high street retailer John Lewis taps into the hearts of millions of Brits with a new Christmas ad. This year is no different, after it unveiled a new £7 million marketing campaign, Monty's Christmas, which centres on a little boy called Sam who wants to give his little penguin mate Monty the gift he has been dreaming of -- a new penguin companion called Mabel. John Lewis' festive campaigns tend to drive up its profits, and this year will likely be the same. However, to ensure this remains the case, the company is betting on technology to get mums and dads spending, with a little help from their children.
Xbox One trims $50 for the holidays
The price of the Xbox One will drop by $50 for a limited time in the United States starting November 2, Microsoft announced. The stand-alone system will cost $350 until January 3, 2015 at participating retailers, which will include Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Microsoft's stores, Target, Toys R Us and Walmart. The holiday savings applies to all versions of the console, so those in the market for one of Microsoft's Xbox One bundles will also save $50 during the two-month period. That includes the Assassin's Creed Unity bundle, available before Unity launches over a week later, will cost $350 for the standard version that also includes Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and $450 for the version with both games and Kinect. The temporary price cut follows a much more permanent one the UK received in September. [Image: Microsoft]
'Fantasia: Music Evolved' and its origins in the Kinect-hacking scene
The developers at Harmonix aren't afraid to hit the reset button if something isn't working correctly. Chances are, strumming a plastic Stratocaster changed quite a bit before you ever even started playing "Creep" by Radiohead in Rock Band. Same goes for stepping to the beat of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" in Dance Central, too. That willingness to start from square one time and again? Well, it's carried through to the developer's latest Kinect title, Fantasia: Music Evolved, out now for Xbox 360 and Xbox One, as well. The team's aim, seemingly regardless of project, is for whatever you're doing in one of their titles to seem perfectly obvious and natural.
Microsoft unveils Kinect PC adapter, issues SDK 2.0 for free
Today must be Christmas for would-be Kinect hackers as Microsoft has made it even easier to dig into the guts of its 3D camera peripheral with both new software and hardware. Most notably, Kinect fans can download the gadget's new software developer's kit at no charge. Not only does SDK 2.0 include "over 200 improvements" since June's public preview, Microsoft also claims it's a "substantially more stable and feature-rich product." That should come in handy for developers hoping to sell their Kinect-enabled wares through the Windows Store, as alongside the new SDK 2.0, Microsoft now allows Kinect developers to commercially deploy their programs through the digital distribution platform. "This was a frequent request from the community and we are delighted to enable you to bring more personal computing experiences that feature gesture control, body tracking, and object recognition to Windows customers around the world," reads Microsoft's announcement. Additionally, Microsoft has released a $50 Kinect adaptor that uses USB 3.0 to connect to a Windows 8 or 8.1 PC. While it won't replace the Windows-native Kinect for Windows camera peripheral, the adapter should make it easier to link an Xbox One Kinect with your home computer. [Image: Microsoft]
It costs $50 to plug an Xbox One Kinect into your PC
What's stopping you from creating the first killer Kinect 2.0 hack? Well, now that Microsoft's released the do-all sensor's SDK to the public for free you don't have many more excuses. The software development kit is available without any fees and what's more, you can now put any finished apps up for sale on the Windows Store as well. Just like that! To help developers along even further, Redmond is releasing an adapter that makes the Xbox One Kinect play nicely with a Windows 8 PC. Meaning, they won't have to use a hack to create a hack (or buy a redundant Windows Kinect). The $50 USB 3.0 dongle not only brings price parity between the two previously separate cameras, but it's another instance of Microsoft reversing a previous hardline policy to better suit its customers too. Now, get out there and get cracking -- the hardware giant already has a head start on you. Update: Developer Ubi Interactive, known for large-screen gesture control installations, has posted a trio of brief, new videos demoing some fresh uses for the Kinect 2.0. We've embedded them below.
Fantasia: Music Evolved review: The rhythm is gonna get you
If you've seen the movie Fantasia, you know the bit where Mickey, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, puts on his robe and wizard hat and tries to make magic happen, arms sweeping grandly through the air. Things eventually get out of hand, of course, but for a brief while, Mickey feels the euphoric glee that comes with mastering something really difficult, and in its best moments, Fantasia: Music Evolved makes you feel the exact same way. Pulling off its complicated combos makes you feel like an honest-to-goodness wizard, bending the forces of light and music to your mighty will. Best of all, no pesky brooms to clean up if you miss a beat. The game doesn't really bear all that much resemblance to the movies that shares its name, though cranky sorcerer Yen Sid does make an appearance. You are indeed his apprentice, but your job is to clean up the noise that's cluttering several different areas of the world after Scout, another protege of Yen Sid, accidentally releases it by trying to get a peek at her future. She'd be happy to clean it up herself, but she doesn't have the magic that you learned as the sorcerer's apprentice, so it's on you to restore the music to each location. As cleanup duties go, it's way more fun than mucking about with a bucket and broom.
Report: Saints Row: The Cooler was canceled THQ brawler
Saints Row: The Cooler appears to have been a fighting game canceled in the twilight years of publisher THQ. Unseen64 reports the brawler, which was in development at Heavy Iron Studios, tried to capitalize on the motion control movement from several years back. Two versions of the game were planned, with one for Xbox 360's Kinect and the other envisioned for PlayStation 3's Move peripheral. Although it was supposed to be a motion controlled fighting game, The Cooler would have also reportedly have featured mini-games like poker tournaments and the ability to "get lap dances." Although, we imagine, providing lap dances would be a far better workout. Gotta work them glutes.
Kinect for Windows can track individual finger movements
Microsoft's new Kinect sensor is a lot of things, but absurdly accurate isn't one of them. To that end, Redmond' Research division is showing off some recent advancements its made with Handpose -- a way to fully track finger movement with its do-all gizmo in a variety of conditions. The video we've embedded below shows off the $150 PC peripheral analyzing and capturing intricate finger and hand movements seemingly pretty easily both from close-range and further back. Changes in lighting don't affect the fidelity either, as the tracking is all performed by the Kinect's depth sensor, not its camera. As Kotaku notes, however, this looks very much like something that'll be used for applications outside of gaming, rather than as a boost for your Dance Central skills. We'd like to imagine that its extra accuracy would probably come in handy in the operating room.
Microsoft's RoomAlive turns your living room into a holodeck
Microsoft's IllumiRoom project has expanded beyond a single-Kinect set-up and is now called "RoomAlive." RoomAlive turns an enclosed area into an interactive gaming space, with enemies and puzzles projected on walls, floors and objects for residents to take out with their hands, feet or peripherals. The new and improved RoomAlive uses multiple projectors and depth cameras to scan a room and all of its contents, and then it superimposes interactive environments on top of everything. "IllumiRoom was largely focused on display, extending traditional gaming experiences out of the TV," the Microsoft Research team writes. "RoomAlive instead focuses on interaction, and the new kinds of games that we can create with interactive projection mapping. RoomAlive looks farther into the future of projection mapping and asks, 'What new experiences will we have in the next few years?'"
Microsoft's RoomAlive turns your den into a video game level
Remember IllumiRoom? It's the Microsoft Research project that pairs an Xbox Kinect with a projector to extend your TV onto a wall, resulting in an immersive (and hallucinogenic) experience. Redmond has just revealed that IllumiRoom 2.0 is now called RoomAlive and is a huge leap over what it was last year. The new system projects content throughout a room that you can interact with (or shoot), as shown in the insane video below. Instead of a single Kinect and projector, it uses multiple "procams" consisting of off-the-shelf projectors, Kinects and a control device. Microsoft claims that it's completely auto-calibrating and self-locating, enabling it to calculate the entire 3D geometry of your room in minutes.
Microsoft built a life-size interactive cube powered by Kinect
Third-party developers have grown very fond of building neat stuff with the Kinect, so it's no surprise that Microsoft itself would create projects using this technology. Enter the Cube, a five-sided, Kinect-powered box which can interact with people around it -- the company describes it as a "canvas for a new kind of creative expression" and a "technological sculpture that's a venue for new types of interactive art." You can dance, or make other random body gestures, in front of it and the Cube will project that image onto one of its panels, in a rather colorful way, no less; think of it as what you would see on a game like Just Dance, but minus the layer of flashy outfits. Microsoft's Cube isn't all about the Kinect, however. Inside, there are also five computers and five projectors which, paired alongside a total of four new Kinects, are what make the magic possible. You can watch the Cube in action after the break.
Xbox One's newest Kinect game is a comic-book styled murder mystery
Lets say you're already burned out on Destiny and are looking for something a bit, well, different than what the Xbox One currently has on offer. That might just mean that D4 (short for Dark Dreams Don't Die), the latest game from the creator of cult-hit Deadly Premonition, could be the relief you didn't even know you were looking for. It's one of the scant few Kinect-enabled games releasing soon, too. The episodic title was first teased during Microsoft's E3 event last year and has gone largely unheard from since. That's recently changed, as Xbox Wire has an interview with its developer Hidetaka Suehiro, better known as Swery65, ahead of the first installment hitting the Xbox Marketplace today. Update: D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die is now available for $15 right here.
NBA 2K15 scans your face, thinks you're beautiful
NBA 2K15 will feature the ability for players to scan their faces into the game and onto the bodies of digital athletes. 2K Sports revealed the feature in a tutorial video, which instructs prospective virtual basketballers to hold the PlayStation Camera six to 12 inches away from their faces. After slowly turning their head both ways, players will find their mapped mugs in the game, at which point they can fine-tune their features. Created players can then be used in MyCareer mode, where they will likely get dunked on by cover star Kevin Durant. While the tutorial mentioned the PlayStation Camera by name, 2K says the feature uses "first-party camera hardware." The publisher also doesn't specify whether the feature is locked to a given console, indicating that Xbox One players can use the Kinect to scan their faces as well. NBA 2K15 will launch October 7 for PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. [Image: 2K]
Rumor: Here's what a Kinect-powered Gears of War looked like
A Kinect-controlled RTS spinoff in Microsoft's Gears of War franchise made it to the prototyping stage on the Xbox 360 before it was quietly canceled, a newly released gameplay video at VGLeaks suggests. The video demonstrates motion-controlled gameplay presented from an overhead perspective. Players use gesture controls to target enemies as they guide a four-person team through destroyed urban environments, making use of environmental cover throughout. Given that Kinect 1.0's gesture recognition and response was sporadic even under the best conditions, an action-focused RTS seems like a poor fit for the peripheral. Apparently Microsoft and developer Epic Games agreed, as Gears of War: Tactics was never officially announced. The game's current development status is unknown. [Image: Microsoft / Epic Games / VGLeaks]
You can now answer Xbox One Skype calls with your voice
If there's one wing of Microsoft that's hoping a Kinect is part of your Xbox One experience, it's probably Skype. The latest updates to SuperSkype Extreme let you answer a call while you're playing a game or watching TV, snapping it off to the side like just about every other app on the console with a simple "Xbox, answer" voice command. The snapped-app fun doesn't stop there, because instead of interrupting whatever you're doing to view any recent calls or favorite contacts by going full-screen, you can now do that in the small window off to the side of your display. Message previews get in on the same action, too. If you're of the picture-sharing mind, the Xbox One app now accepts messages sent via mobile device as well, and you can even turn them into a slideshow if that's your bag -- after all, it won't cost you anything.
Get an Xbox One Kinect sensor for $150 in October
A standalone Kinect sensor for Xbox One will hit retail for $150 on October 7, Microsoft announced this morning. The solo Kinect sensor comes with a copy of Dance Central Spotlight. In May, Microsoft announced that it would sell Xbox One consoles without the Kinect for $400, a $100 drop in price. Dance Central Spotlight comes from Harmonix, a studio whose games largely rely on Kinect – when news of the dis-Kinected Xbox One unit went live, Harmonix shared its gut reactions on Twitter, along with an official statement re-establishing its commitment to Kinect games such as Fantasia: Music Evolved. A month after launching the Kinect-less console in June, Xbox One sales doubled in the US, Microsoft reported. [Image: Microsoft]
