At Microsoft’s Xbox 360 E3 2010 keynote briefing today, show attendees were given a special glimpse of developer Turn 10’s future vision of the racing genre and its potential with the magic of Kinect. As part of the coming soon showcase of Kinect-enabled games at the conclusion of the keynote, Turn 10’s Creative Director Dan Greenawalt and Lead Designer Bill Giese took to the stage with “Forza Motorsport Preview”.
The “Forza Motorsport Preview” demonstration shows the imaginative possibilities of Kinect and the impact controller-free gaming will have on the racing genre and automotive experiences overall. On track, this demo puts the player behind the wheel of the new Ferrari 458 Italia in a passing challenge against a never-ending stream of less powerful cars using intuitive and familiar driving gestures to control the action. Head tracking allows the player to look into the corners or glance down to see the cockpit instrumentation. The Forza Motorsport franchise continues to broaden its audience by combining beautiful HD graphics running at 60 frames per second and authentic realism with easy-to-pickup gameplay and universal car passion. Turn 10 has adopted Kinect’s natural user interface as a key component of innovation within the racing genre.
The second half of the “Forza Motorsport Preview” presentation took the audience on a virtual tour of the new Ferrari 458 Italia within the expansive backdrop of the Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah. Rendered completely in real-time on the Xbox 360, the Kinect car experience allows the player to interact with the car – controller free – as if they were standing next to the vehicle in the game. With the Kinect camera tracking both full-body movement and proximity, players can literally walk up to the 458 Italia, lean into the windows for a closer look, lift the glass canopy to examine the car’s powerful V8 engine, or open the door to slide into the cockpit all with the most natural of gestures.
Once inside the cockpit of the Ferrari 458 Italia, Kinect will track the player’s head movement, allowing seamless examination of the ultra-high detailed interior, which includes everything you’d expect from the real 458 Italia – from buttons and digital gauges, to the stitching on the leather trim of the dashboard – it’s all there with impeccable attention to detail. And finally, the “Forza Motorsport Preview” car experience culminates with the player’s push of the Ferrari 458 Italia’s trademark START button, bringing the car to life with a rumble of its mid-rear engine and the boot-up sequence of its digital gauges. This is as close as you’ll get to the real thing – all without the need for a controller.
“Forza Motorsport Preview” is a select peek at one aspect of the future of the Forza Motorsport franchise, both in terms of the way Kinect has empowered Turn 10 to create a revolutionary way to interact with virtual cars, as well as the breathtaking foundation of a new graphics engine capable of producing the images seen in our E3 gallery. The next full Forza Motorsport experience, which utilizes some of the ideas presented in this demo, will ship in 2011.
Turn 10’s best-selling Forza Motorsport 3, released October 2009, has sold through more than 2 million copies worldwide and continues to enjoy heavy rotation in the Xbox 360s of over 750,000 players each week. Post-release, the Forza Motorsport community has collectively purchased more than 2 million units of DLC, moving more than 10 million vehicles through Xbox LIVE Marketplace. To date, Forza Motorsport 3 remains among the top 15 titles across all games played by Xbox LIVE’s 25 million subscribers.
