Just dance with Jason Derulo
Jason Derulo is getting up next to E3 attendees.
The pop star is pumping up the crowd at Ubisoft’s E3 presentation on Monday afternoon with a performance of his hit Want To Want Me.
Derulo’s tunes are featured in the latest instalment of Ubisoft’s choreography franchise Just Dance.
Just Dance executive producer Jason Altman says Just Dance 2016 will be available for all consoles, regardless of whether they have cameras. The game can employ smartphones to detect players’ voices and motions.
Altman also says the dance series will add a streaming service.
Pele’s a sport
Pele is charging into Electronic Arts’ E3 extravaganza.
The football legend is appearing on stage on Monday afternoon at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to discuss his legacy, while EA uses his attendance to promote the forthcoming football simulation Fifa 16.
Fifa 16 general manager David Rutter says Fifa players will receive downloadable content featuring Pele and Lionel Messi following EA’s briefing.
A trailer narrated by Pele debuted after his appearance on stage. EA also showed off footage from sports simulators NBA Live 16 and Madden NFL 16.
Mass Effect teaser
Electronic Arts is launching its E3 briefing with a glimpse at the fourth instalment of the sci-fi role-playing saga Mass Effect.
The game publisher showed a brief teaser of Mass Effect: Andromeda at the beginning of EA’s news conference in Los Angeles. The trailer showed an N7 officer flipping through intergalactic destinations before arriving on a desert battlefield. The clip promises that players would “discover a new galaxy.”
EA CEO Andrew Wilson says Monday’s event at the Shrine Auditorium will feature a look at three new franchises, as well as the multiplayer game Star Wars: Battlefront and racing series Need for Speed.
HoloLens augmented reality headset
Microsoft is giving a glimpse of how its HoloLens augmented reality headset can work with games at its presentation for E3, the annual game industry conference.
Executives on stage at The Galen Centre in Los Angeles demonstrated how the headset was used to play Minecraft on a coffee table. While the audience saw Microsoft Studios executive Saxs Persson stare at an empty table, a special camera allowed them to see what he was seeing — a perfect 3D representation of a pixelated Minecraft world.
He was able to zoom into the scene using his voice — saying “closer” — and could look through walls to see inside rooms and underground simply by moving his head inside the hologram. He could also navigate the world by pinching his fingers and moving the world around.
Beside him, another executive played along in the world using Microsoft’s Surface tablet.
Light show
Microsoft made attendees part of the show during its E3 presentation in Los Angeles on Monday, illuminating the neck-band each person had to wear to gain admittance.
The devices gave the appearance of a wave of lights rotating through the The Galen Centre arena, nestled amid the campus of the University of Southern California.
Halo 5 footage
Microsoft kicked off its E3 game industry conference with new footage from its latest franchise game, Halo 5: Guardians, which will come out on October 27 and features a multiplayer zone with up to 24 live players and maps four times the size of previous versions.
Executives also got a whoop from the hundreds of bloggers, journalists and gamers in attendance at The Galen Centre when they announced the Xbox One console will have backward-compatibility with Xbox 360 games. Discs from the previous Xbox console can simply be inserted, downloaded to the hard drive and played on the newer console.
In a shot at how Sony’s PlayStation allows for playing older platform games with a subscription, Xbox executive Mike Ybarra told attendees, “We won’t charge you to play the games you already own.”
The company also unveiled a new controller called the Xbox Elite with customisable buttons.
And so it begins
Doors open, and hundreds of people lined up outside are let into The Galen Centre in Los Angeles for Microsoft’s Xbox briefing for E3, the video game industry’s annual conference.
Microsoft is expected to promote the latest game in its Halo franchise as well as give another glimpse of its augmented reality headset, HoloLens.
Bloggers, gamers and journalists, many wearing the black and green colors of Xbox, stream into the arena on the campus of the University of Southern California. Inside, music is blaring in the darkened space covered in Xbox logos while green spotlights sweep the crowd.
