Back in June 2009, Microsoft took the whole technology world by a storm with a flawless & unexpected demo of Project Natal at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, what was not known was the availability & price. Today at CES 2010, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach confirmed that Xbox Natal will be available starting, 2010 holiday season (end of 2010). While there was no demo or any announcement of games exclusively for Natal, there were quite a few interesting announcements regarding games for the Xbox 360. A new genre of games called Psychological Action Thrillers was mentioned with a demo of Alan Wake. Following games will be exclusively available first on the Xbox 360 platform:

• Mass Effect 2
• Splinter Cell Conviction
• Content packs for Modern Warfare 2

Robbie Bach showed a Halo Reach video and announced that the multiplayer beta will begin in Spring 2010 on Xbox Live. A new segment on Xbox Live called Game Room ^[1] will be introduced, Game Room will feature classic arcade games that can be bought and played on the Xbox or Windows PC. Talking of Xbox Live, some interesting numbers regarding Xbox Live that were mentioned:

• 20 million active users on Xbox Live.
• 2.2 million concurrent members online during Christmas and New Year.
• Around 10 million people have used non-gaming applications like Facebook, Twitter, Last.FM & Zune.
• 100 million songs have been downloaded.
• 4000 songs were downloaded during the hour and a half long keynote.

Regarding Xbox 360, an estimated 39 million plus consoles and more than 500 million games have been sold so far. Microsoft is serious about the Xbox platform and the numbers are staggering. Microsoft will not be introducing a new console any time soon and Xbox 360 is now a mature gaming platform perfect time to buy it, I say. As Robbie Bach puts it:

When I said 2010 was going to be a big year for Xbox 360, I was lying. 2010 is going to be the biggest year of Xbox history.