In a ballsy pre E3 move Microsoft have just run a huge and most likely incredibly expensive show to unveil the code named Project Natal and officially name it Kinect. The event had Cique du Soleil performers dancing around dressed as nymphs, magical artificial forests, families on flying couches and journalists dressed in creepy cult like white ponchos who were asked to dance around and wisely did not.

So when the Kinect product retails for $700 at the end of this year you know they're trying to recoup the cost of this event.

Actually I have no idea how much the unit will cost, the event was pretty light on hard factual information.

There were several demos shown at the event, including the Kinect Sports game which looks very similar to Wii Sports, but with Avatars, a Yoga game, Dance Central, Kinectimals which is a pet game that looks a lot like EyePet only not rubbish, Kinect Adventures which looks very similar to Wii Sports Resort and race game Joyride that also featured Avatars driving cars. There was a Disney logo but no actual game announcement and someone played a Star Wars game based on the Clone Wars show that featured lightsabre action and force pushing that looked like having a lot of potential.

The inclusion of Avatars in most of the Kinetic games is a welcome addition and adds a lot of personality to the games

Celebrity and game journalist twitters have been going nuts with enthusiastic reports from the show, mostly related to how the tech seems to work as its long been promised too. When you Force push a Storm Trooper he goes flying, when you turn the wheel in the air the wheel turns. I have to admit, even though I've long been unimpressed by the Wii and motion controls in general, it's hard not to get excited about Kinect.

There was also a demo of video chat which is pretty cool, or at least it will be in five years when Australian's get the NBN, I don't imagine it's going to work that great for us otherwise.

And what better way to move a new technology like Natal than to throw in a new Xbox 360 model, perhaps a slim model?

Oh slim, like a super model or a tapeworm

It's a leaked Italian ad that shows an Xbox 360 with 250 GB hard drive, WiFi and the troubling mention of it being 'compatible with connect'. So whats incompatible with Kinect then? Hmmm. Either most of the internet has been taken in by a sensational prank or this is the real deal, when you consider the voice chat function of Kinect it makes sense they'd want to put out a 360 with WiFi as part of the package. Makes you wonder as well if existing Xbox's are going to manage Kinect okay without that fat 250 GB hard drive.

There are many questions and hopefully some enterprising journos can prize some answers out of Microsoft at E3.