Microsoft introduced five new games for its camera-based motion controller at a Tokyo Game Show keynote here Thursday morning. All come from Japanese development studios — and all are aimed squarely at hard-core gamers. Developers such as Grasshopper Manufacture (No More Heroes), Nana On-Sha (PaRappa the Rapper, and From Software (Armored Core) will produce games for Kinect featuring horror gameplay, realistic violence and hard-core play mechanics.

Well, we’re making an assumption on that last one. None of the games were actually demonstrated at the keynote. Only trailers were shown.

Kinect, which Microsoft will release Nov. 4 in the United States and Nov. 20 in Japan, uses two cameras to sense the position and movement of a player’s body. At E3 Expo this year, Microsoft showed off mostly casual games for the device, many of which were similar to games for Nintendo’s Wii.

Hard-core players complained that the $150 device didn’t have content for them — Thursday’s Tokyo Game Show keynote would seem to be Microsoft’s response.

Japanese developers have “fueled the imaginations of players around the world,” said Microsoft Game Studios Vice President Phil Spencer, name-checking Shigeru Miyamoto and Toru Iwatani. “The inspirational figures of Japanese game development understood these principles as if it were in their DNA.” Five of the six best-selling Xbox Live Arcade games are Japanese, he said.

5 New Kinect Games

Grasshopper showed a trailer for an action game called codename D, which CEO Suda 51 called “hard-core and punky and very casual.” From what we could see, the game is about a man who throws flaming baseballs at psychotic masked villains in a decrepit amusement park.

PaRappa creator Masaya Matsuura is stepping out of the rhythm genre to create Haunt, a cartoony game about exploring a haunted house.

“I was shocked and impressed” with Kinect, he said. “What we are trying to create is a horror game. But by utilizing the Kinect environment, it’s very innovative and very much fun. A very horrible game is being created,” said Matsuura through a translator who would probably phrase that last sentence differently if he had to do it all over again.

Capcom announced that it will partner with From Software to revive the Steel Battalion franchise for Kinect. Ironic, as the original Steel Battalion used the most complicated game controller ever, a $200 monstrosity with 40 buttons.

Producer Keiji Inafune took the stage, wearing a bomber jacket with a giant American flag on the lapel, to set up the story of the game — it’s set in 2082 Manhattan, but in a world where all computer chips have been destroyed. So it looks like 1942 Normandy with giant robots.

Project Draco, a Kinect game from the creator of Phantom Dust, looks like Sega's Panzer Dragoon.
Photo: Robert Gilhooly/Wired.com

Two other games were announced: Project Draco, a game from Phantom Dust director Yukio Futatsugi that looks quite a bit like Sega’s Panzer Dragoon, and Rise of the Nightmares, a horror game from Sega that looks like its own House of the Dead, but much more unsettling and scary than that game’s campy brand of zombie-shooting.

Just two non-Kinect games were announced during Microsoft’s presentation. The shoot’em-up kings at Treasure will bring the classic (and rare) Sega Saturn shooter Radiant Silvergun to Xbox Live Arcade, with improved graphics, cooperative play and Xbox Live features including downloadable replays.

Finally, Spike will bring its popular (in Japan) Fire Pro-Wrestling series to Xbox 360, letting you use your avatars as luchadores.

All of the games announced at the show are planned to be released in 2011.

See Also:

• In Japan, Gamemakers Struggle to Instill Taste for Western Shooters
• TGS Moment: Bomber-Jacketed Keiji Inafune Gets Inopportune Phone Call

Authors: Chris Kohler

to know more click here