Written
by Andy Schreiner
on Saturday, 12 June 2010.
With the summer slowdown of new releases giving a boring, yet wallet-saving, time for gamers and a break for developers around the world, comes perhaps the most important time of the year: The Electronic Entertainment Expo. While we're not exactly privy to all the secrets that developers, publishers, and big names in the field have with the big gaming websites, we're excited all the same. No matter what happens, there will be new games announced, potentially new systems, and plenty of "what the hell" moments to go around for an entire week of fun.
Microsoft will be first up on Sunday, and they are heavily expected to bring the Natal, a control system that uses a camera and motion sensor instead of the standard controller, and make it the star of the show. Their take on the Wii, if you will. When it was announced last year, the project was still under development and there weren't any games officially announced for it. It's safe to expect a release date, plus launch titles to accompany it, and lots of oohs and ahhs from the crowd during their live conference. It would not be a surprise to see the Natal used with many of today's sports games franchises such as Madden or NBA Live, or to see them use it in a first-person shooter.
There isn't a whole lot else the Microsoft could talk about outside of Natal. We all know that Halo: Reach is on the way and looks good from the beta. Gears of War 3 couldn't possibly be more original or jaw-dropping that the first two were, and there will be Fable 3. Microsoft has much deeper pockets than what is expected of them, so it's safe to assume that there will be a lot more surprises coming from them.