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As Chris blogged earlier, Microsoft announced Sunday night that Project Natal, the upcoming motion-control camera for the Xbox 360, finally has an official name: Kinect (sounds like "connect"). And during their E3 keynote Monday, Xbox execs finally revealed a street date for the long-awaited accessory: Nov. 4 (in North America, at least). Still to be announced, though, is a sticker price.

While Microsoft had plenty of hot game trailers to show off during its E3 presentation (Call of Duty: Black Ops, Gears of War 3 and Halo: Reach, for starters), Kinect was clearly the star of the show, with Xbox execs demonstrating a series of upcoming titles specifically designed to take advantage of the new accessory.

Among them was a clear competitor to Wii Fit: a fitness title called Your Shape: Fitness Evolved  that "scans" your body into a virtual gym and pairs you with your own digital trainer, who guides you through a series of exercises.

Like Wii Fit, Your Shape designs a routine based on your size and shape. Unlike the Wii title, which uses a wireless balance board to measure you,Ed hardy t-shirts, Your Shape checks out your body (and your every move, in fact) through the digital cams on the Kinect accessory. Besides the usual leg lifts and sit-ups, Your Shape includes a Zen "energy class" and a game in which you punch and kick digital bricks floating in your virtual workout space. Cool.

Naturally, Microsoft has its own version of Wii Sports on tap, with a game called — you guessed it — Kinect Sports. It's a suite of full-body motion-control games including plenty of soccer, bowling, javelin, long jump, table tennis and hurdles action.

Also demoed Monday was a pretty charming children's game called Kinectimals. During the demo, we watched as a little girl (yes, a real one) "played" with a virtual tiger cub — "petting" the purring feline at first, then making it sit, jump, twirl around and play dead. "Where's your jump rope?" asked the girl, and the cub obligingly ran off and came back with a jump rope clenched in its jaws. At one point the child ran behind a prop and hid; the cub then began looking around, pressing its nose right against the screen and whining mournfully. When the girl jumped back in front of the camera, the little tiger danced with joy. Cute.

Perhaps a bit more interesting for us grownups was a demo of Kinect's interface capabilities. Just wave your hand from the Xbox 360 dashboard and you'll be able to sign into Xbox Live. Wave again and you'll call up a Kinect-specific interface, and then just say (for example) "Xbox, Zune" to browse your music, or "Xbox, Facebook" to see what your Facebook pals are up to. You'll also be able to pick Netflix movies to stream or scan to a specific scene by waving your hand across the interface.

Of course, video chat via the Kinect camera will be another key Xbox Live feature, including the ability to watch videos with your video chat partners or conduct over-the-Xbox video calls with Windows Live users.

Saving the best for last, Microsoft announced that LucasArts is creating a "Star Wars" title for Kinect slated for next year. A brief gameplay demo featured a gesture-controlled Jedi slashing hapless Stormtroopers, smashing Imperial ships with Force powers, and — oh yes — clashing lightsabers with Lord Vader himself. I'm so there.

I came away from the Microsoft E3 demo feeling pretty jazzed about Kinect's possibilities, especially in terms of voice- and gesture-controlled interface manipulation. Whether we'll get a solid selection of hard-core Kinect-oriented game titles — say, a motion-controlled Gears of War or Halo game, or even Call of Duty — remains to be seen, as does the final price tag.

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

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Starting in November, Xbox 360 gamers will be able to drive a sports car, get fit, video chat with relatives, or even fire up a streaming movie,Lacoste, all without having to touch a controller.

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