Xbox 'Game Room' Revealed in Leaked CES Vid, Project Natal's 2010 Launch Affirmed

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While Microsoft's Consumer Electronics Show 2010 keynote doesn't kick off for a few hours--6:30 PM PST / 8:30 PM CST--news is beginning to trickle out as the company inadvertently posted a video discussing some impending announcements.

The video, noticed by Joystiq and still on Microsoft's servers as of this writing, sees Entertainment & Devices Division president Robbie Bach discuss something called "Xbox Game Room," seemingly a collection of retro-esque Xbox 360 mini-games, which fits with earlier rumblings of a virtual arcade for Xbox Avatars.

Explained Bach of Xbox Game Room:

Game Room in some ways is sort of a retro approach. It's interesting. There's a generation of people...who grew up with games like Centipede, that are favorites. They look almost like casual fun games today--at the time, they were high-end edgy games. Game Room was the idea of bringing that back to the market and bringing that to a very broad audience.

I think what we're going to find is, when people can get thirty or more of these types of games, they're gonna love it for the experience. And it's not just you or I who are gonna love it. Even the people who would call themselves 'hardcore gamers' are gonna say, 'oh wow, this is fun in a retro way.'

It's sort of like my daughter going to watch Journey. I'm like, 'that was a band that was playing when I was growing up.' And she thinks it's a cool band, and I like the music. I think you're going to have the same phenomenon with Game Room where I'm going to enjoy the games and they're going to think it's cool.

Elsewhere in the interview, Bach affirmed that the Xbox 360's motion-tracking camera Project Natal will arrive in 2010--"I think [Natal] is gonna revolutionize how people think about the gaming business and actually turn it into an interactive entertainment business...where people can break the mold of 'gaming' and get to real entertainment," he said--and billed 2010 as "the best consumer year perhaps [Microsoft] has ever done."

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 6, 2010 3:06 PM

    It won't be the same unless you can drop a token on the marquee to save your place in line.

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      January 6, 2010 3:18 PM

      So sad that the majority of the Shack has no understanding of this comment. Also, quarters > tokens.

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        January 6, 2010 3:40 PM

        I don't feel that sad about it.

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      January 6, 2010 4:08 PM

      ahhh good old days

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      January 6, 2010 4:27 PM

      yess. whatever they're doing it better integrate scorekeeping really well.

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      January 6, 2010 4:54 PM

      Haha! The day Dragon's Lair showed up at tech, the line of quarters went across the entire top of the marquee. And Gauntlet 1 & 2 and Championship Sprint were tough, cause what if the players wanted to just drop another quarter themselves, and keep playing? (Gauntlets we all agreed you could spend a dollar per session if people were waiting, Championship Sprint we limited to $0.50)

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      January 6, 2010 6:06 PM

      here's my token, save my place

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