One of the most popular mech franchises in gaming, and one of the stand-out original IP from the Xbox, Steel Battalion made its return late yesterday in Microsoft’s keynote speech of Tokyo Game Show. A collaboration between Capcom and From Software (Demon’s Souls), Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor will release exclusively on Xbox 360 in 2011 with support for the Kinect platform.
“Earlier, the game was using a very large controller which made this very famous,” detailed Capcom’s Keiji Inafune. “But now it will use Kinect. This is for core gamers. We are focusing on that. Even with Kinect, we are creating games for core gamers.”
Also on display for Kinect during Microsoft’s keynote were several new IP, including the mysterious Codename D from producer Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture, as well as the equally opaque Rise of Nightmares survival horror game from Sega, a new 3-D dragon flight title from the maker of Panzar Dragoon Saga (currently under the working title of Project Draco), and the more family-friendly chills of Haunt.
Damn… they’re not gonna use the old controller again. I was kinda hoping they would. I still have it lying around from the first Steel Battalion 😉