Microsoft’s project naming team sure has hit a big flop. I wonder what’s wrong with the name Natal, it sound quite “lethal”, like a Tomahawk. Anyway, Microsoft has officially rename Project Natal to Xbox Kinect.

“For lots of people, that controller is a barrier,” Microsoft creative director Kudo Tsunoda told USA Today. “We set out to make a new control paradigm where anybody can get in and play, without having to read the instructions or learn a complicated set of controls.”

Xbox Kinect will be unveiled at E3 tomorrow, along with some titles at launch. Lucasarts has prepared a Star Wars game for Kinect, along with Disney, MTV with their dancing game, a pet-training title, a Wii Sports mimic called “Kinect Sports” (I lol at the name), an adventure sports game (tennis?), and an expected kid racing game called Joyride which will feature the motion-control as its selling point.

The new Xbox 360 console will also receive some make-up powder. Gone are the plastic curves and comes the new look which is more sleek and “Dell-server like” design. The case also seemed to have better air ventilation, which we assume can improve the hot Xbox 360’s heating issue. Along with it is 250GB hard drive and an integrated Wi-Fi (thank God). The spec of the Wi-Fi adapter is still relatively unknown, as well as other hardware in the console. We assume that this new console “facelift” will be released alongside the Kinect, as it is compatible with it. Now what we are curious is whether the Kinect will be backward compatible with older Xbox consoles.

[via Kotaku]