Rare Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Twycross, Leicestershire. Rare's games span the platform, first-person shooter, action-adventure, fighting, and racing genres. Its most popular games include the Battletoads, Donkey Kong, and Banjo-Kazooie series, as well as games like GoldenEye 007 (1997), Perfect Dark (2000), Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001), Viva Piñata (2006), and Sea of Thieves (2018).
Gregor Justin "Gore" Verbinski is an American film maker and musician. He is best known for directing The Ring and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, and for producing and directing the animated film Rango. For his work on Rango, Verbinski won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film, the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film, and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film.
Donald Allan Mattrick is a Canadian businessman who previously served as the CEO of social gaming company Zynga and the president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft in 2007, Mattrick worked at Electronic Arts for 15 years as the president of Worldwide Studios. In 1982, he founded Distinctive Software, which was later acquired by Electronic Arts in 1991 and renamed to EA Vancouver.
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information announced later that month at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).
The seventh generation of home video game consoles began on November 22, 2005, with the release of Microsoft's Xbox 360 home console. This was followed by the release of Sony's PlayStation 3 on November 17, 2006, and Nintendo's Wii on November 19, 2006. Each new console introduced new technologies. The Xbox 360 offered games rendered natively at high-definition video (HD) resolutions, the PlayStation 3 offered HD movie playback via a built-in 3D Blu-ray Disc player, and the Wii focused on integrating controllers with movement sensors as well as joysticks. Some Wii controllers could be moved about to control in-game actions, which enabled players to simulate real-world actions through movement during gameplay. By this generation, video game consoles had become an important part of the global IT infrastructure; it is estimated that video game consoles represented 25% of the world's general-purpose computational power in 2007.
Xbox Avatars are avatars and characters that represent users of the Xbox network service on the Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X and Series S video game consoles, Windows 10, and Windows 10 Mobile. Avatars originally debuted on the Xbox 360 as part of the "New Xbox Experience" system update released on November 19, 2008, updated on Xbox One with "New Xbox One Experience" Xbox One System Software on November 12, 2015, and reimagined with the release of the next generation character for Xbox One on October 11, 2018.
Kinect is a line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flight calculations, which can in turn be used to perform real-time gesture recognition and body skeletal detection, among other capabilities. They also contain microphones that can be used for speech recognition and voice control.
Project Milo was a project in development by Lionhead Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console. Formerly a secretive project under the early codename "Dimitri", Project Milo was unveiled at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in a demonstration for Kinect, as a "controller-free" entertainment initiative for the Xbox 360 based on depth-sensing and pattern recognition technologies. The project was a tech demo to showcase the capabilities of Kinect and was not released, despite conflicting reports that the project was an actual game.
Dance Evolution is a Japanese dancing video game developed by the makers of the Dance Dance Revolution series. The game was unveiled at Konami's E3 2010 press conference, for Xbox 360 Kinect. The game was released in November 2010. Dance Evolution has 30 tracks, including hip hop, R&B, pop and techno and will be supported with additional songs as downloadable content. An arcade video game port, titled Dance Evolution Arcade, was released on March 27, 2012, in Japan. Although the gameplay remains the same, it has several features that differentiate it with the original version. A spin-off, Rhythm Party, was released on February 1, 2012.
Kinect Star Wars is a Star Wars video game developed by Terminal Reality and published by LucasArts and Microsoft Studios for the Xbox 360 that uses the Kinect motion peripheral. The game features four game modes: "Jedi Destiny", the primary game mode; podracing; Rancor Rampage; and Galactic Dance-off. In Jedi Destiny, players assume the role models of Jedi Padawans as they wield their lightsabers and use the Force to attack enemies mostly from the prequel trilogy using gestures. Podracing is a race-based game mode, Rancor Rampage is a destruction-based game mode, and Galactic Dance-off is a dance-based game mode similar to the Dance Central series.
Kinect Sports: Season Two is a sequel to Kinect Sports co-developed by Rare and BigPark, and published by Microsoft Studios. It was unveiled at E3 2011's Microsoft Conference for Kinect and released in October 2011. The game adds six new sports and voice control. As with the previous game, it requires the Kinect sensor. Along with its predecessor Kinect Sports, it has been released in the Kinect Sports Ultimate Collection bundle on 18 September 2012 with additional bonus content and extra sports in Season Two added, basketball, golf and skiing.
Ryse: Son of Rome is a 2013 action-adventure video game developed by Crytek and published by Microsoft Studios. Set in an alternate version of Ancient Rome, Ryse follows the life of the Roman centurion Marius Titus as he becomes one of the leaders in the Roman Legion. Gameplay revolves around Marius using his sword to strike enemies and shield to deflect attacks. Execution sequences are featured in the game, which are quick-time events that serve as an extension to combat. The game features a cooperative multiplayer mode, which tasks players to fight against waves of enemies in maps that are changing dynamically.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012 was the 18th E3 held. The event took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. It began on June 5, 2012, and ended on June 7, 2012, with 45,700 total attendees. It was televised on Spike and streamed online to computers, mobile devices, PlayStation Home and on Xbox Live via IGN's application. This was the last event to be broadcast by G4 along with being the last one to feature a physical press conference by Nintendo which mainly focused on games that were coming to the then upcoming Wii U video game console that launched later that year and was later considered to be a commercial failure.
Joy Ride Turbo is a kart racing game for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One .The player controls their avatar as they drive vehicles in a combat racing tournament. The game was developed by BigPark and published by Microsoft Studios. It is a sequel to Kinect Joy Ride. Originally outed via a rating on the Australian Classification Board on April 11, 2012, it was unveiled by Microsoft Studios on April 27, 2012. Unlike its predecessor, Joy Ride Turbo does not use Kinect. It was released on May 23, 2012, and later added as one of the first 100 titles on the Xbox One backwards compatibility list on November 9, 2015.
Ascend: Hand of Kul was a 2013 free-to-play, character-action MMORPG game for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. It was unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012 during Microsoft's press conference. Though the beta version was available in the Xbox Live Arcade for free to Gold members, the game never saw full release. On August 18, 2014, the game was delisted from the Xbox marketplace. On August 21, 2014, it was announced the game's server will be closing November 18, 2014. The PC version was shut down on June 20, 2016.
Just Dance 4 is a 2012 music rhythm game developed and published by Ubisoft as the fourth main installment of the Just Dance series. Announced at E3 2012 by Flo Rida and Aisha Tyler, it was released on the Wii, the Wii U, the PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360. The Wii, PlayStation Move and Kinect versions were released on October 2, 2012 in Europe and Australia and on October 9, 2012 in North America, The Wii U version was released on November 18, 2012 in North America and on November 30, 2012 in Europe and Australia, as a launch title for the console.
Dance Central is a music rhythm game series developed by Harmonix, creators of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises.
Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, online services such as the Xbox network and Xbox Game Pass, and the development arm Xbox Game Studios. The brand was first introduced in the United States in November 2001, with the launch of the original Xbox console.
The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Australia, and South America in November 2013 and in Japan, China, and other European countries in September 2014. It is the first Xbox game console to be released in China, specifically in the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone. Microsoft marketed the device as an "all-in-one entertainment system", hence the name "Xbox One". An eighth-generation console, it mainly competed against Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Wii U and later the Switch.
