Season Two Pre-Launch Publicity Potpourri
With only a fortnight to go (less in some territories), promotion is underway in earnest and the fair name of Kinect Sports: Season Two is surfacing in all kinds of situations. TGS, EG Expo, GAMEfest, GAMES11 and rAge were among the last wave of public gaming events, so let’s rummage like maddened raccoons to unearth what’s been going on since then.
The G3 (Gaming and Giving for Good) fundraisers in the US were a big deal, with actors, musicians and sports stars ranging from Anthony Anderson to Ryan Merriman via Brea Grant and Carol Rodriguez stepping into the G3 Miracle Lounge to field Kinect and Xbox 360 Game With Fame challenges from online competitors in aid of a great cause, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. That was a big sentence. Meanwhile, Kinect Sports went solo in GameStop’s own G3 Game With Fame, inviting people to meet and compete against basketball stars Shawn Marion, Andrew Bynum, Brandon Roy and Landry Fields in four different stores from New York to West Hollywood.
CollegeFest 2011 drew a few diverse faces of its own into the Sports fold, while Canada went with football stars for its own official event – the Kinect Sports: Season Two All Star Challenge, still live at the time of writing – which offers entrants a chance to hike over to Toronto and face off against Damon Allen and J.P. Arencibia.
In the UK, Season Two picks up where Kinect Sports left off in sponsoring the latest series of Sky’s knockabout sports quiz A League of Their Own on Friday nights, and also joins the ‘Your Kinect’ Experience in ferrying its fashionable booth from the Metro Centre down to London’s Westfield and the Clothes Show Live in Birmingham, luring in thrilled gamesplayers and alarmed shoppers to get hands-on and “play Kinect in your own personalised room”.
Also in the UK, press and Xbox webmasters recently headed down to The Gathering 2011 preview event in Reading to play games, watch presentations, mingle and compete with the Xbox EMEA team and devs including Rare’s own “Big Fun” and “The Missile”. Far-flung Singapore then got its own Kinect Magic holiday preview event where the likes of Beatrice Chia and Mark Richmond turned up and got stuck in. We’re a bit envious of the Singaporean contingent’s fancy Season Two decor.
The TV ad for Season Two is now circulating online, so you should be seeing that pop up on your actual telly very shortly. In the meantime, let’s not forget that Kinect Sports (original flava) is nominated in the Best Sports category at this year’s Golden Joysticks, or that pre-ordering Season Two through listed retailers in certain territories will get you the Bonus Old School Avatar Pack. Superstylin’.
(Image credits: Casey Rodgers/AP Images for Microsoft, Graeme “The Badness” Boyd)
Oct 2011
Top 5 YouTube Rare Remixes
Ordinarily, remixes are confined to sweaty provincial nightclubs or motivational dance compilations beloved by people who exercise. Fortunately, YouTube is also a goldmine of fan-made rejigs of classic console tuneage. So, inspired by the Electro Fizz, Wobble Dub and Big Beat Bonanza remixes included on the Kinect Sports Eyes on the Prize 12″ single, not to mention talented medley-making, tune-reworking YouTube folk like this fellow, we invite you to get your groove on with a sick selection of Rare-inspired sounds. Brap! Brap! Etc.
TOP 5 YOUTUBE RARE REMIXES
According to… Neal Clark
1. B-K: Rusty Bucket Bay (Dubstep Remix)
Ah, dubstep… how far your signature brand of electro gloom-wobble has spread. So much so, that even the likes of Britney and, er… Jinjos are now getting in on the act? As they (apparently) say in dubstep circles, ‘wait for the drop’.
Oct 2011
September Twitbook Sensationalism
September was another busy one for us… well, it would be, given that the launch of Kinect Sports: Season Two is mere weeks away. Mere weeks!
Not content with the looming calendar presence of the Tokyo Game Show (resulting in photo-heavy English-speaking and Japanese-speaking coverage), we went ahead with an all-day press event here at Twycross (Inside Xbox providing a Making Of video and GameSpot posting some of the Challenge Play footage provided). GAMEfest and the Eurogamer Expo also happened on home turf, along with the ongoing Your Kinect Experience, while GAMES11 and rAge kicked off overseas. The end of the month saw Season Two feature in a celebrity charity drive at the G3 Lounge, while that dapper gentleman Plan B had his own crack at the game in Ibiza.
Our N64 heritage got some attention in Nintendo Life‘s Most Memorable Nintendo 64 Games and Joystick Division‘s list of things learned from DKR, while the Rareware Archives list machine expelled coverage of the Top Rare Location Spots. Over on Facebook we singled out not one, not two, but three new Friday Sports stars. Meanwhile, in the Season Two anticipation poll on our Community page, a late surge for Tennis (22%) left it neck-and-neck with American Football (both at 22%), with Baseball (19%) and Golf (17%) close behind and Skiing and Darts sprinting to keep up (both at 10%). Should be interesting to see how those figures bear out when the game hits the shelves, and the fun and replayability factors become more influential than itchy pre-release trigger fingers (well, Kinect fingers). Thanks to all who voted – new poll up now. Mascot battle!
The bizarro Indian summer gave us plenty of scope for late September pics, both on the premises and on the way in. While the ducks gathered outside for their inevitable takeover, we sat indoors discouraging jelly-based harassment and sifting through correspondence like this, this and this.
And so September spirals into October, launch month for Kinect Sports: Season Two. Yikes. In this fancy digital age you can occupy yourselves by trying to monitor our stress levels on Twitter and Facebook (Rare and Kinect Sports varieties) as we cannon towards the big day. See you on the other side.
Oct 2011
