Jonathan Takiff: At E3: New games, boxes, accessories, an MS Kinect-ion ... & 3-D

NOTE: THIS STORY HAS BEEN CORRECTED

THE GIZMO: Getting into the games 'n' gizmos at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

OUT OF THE GATE: When it comes to taking a stand and launching new weaponry in the video-game wars, the industry saves its biggest guns for E3, now going on in Los Angeles.

Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have all held launch parties for new systems, software and peripherals, as did third-party game makers like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft. Here's some cream off the top.

MICROSOFT MUNCHIES: Always first out of the gate at E3, Microsoft treated Monday's announcement of its new Xbox 360 add-on as a virtual-system relaunch, which it kind of is.

Building on the family-friendly, throw-your-body-into-it strategy of the popular Nintendo Wii, Microsoft's Kinect is a camera-and-microphone accessory pack adding lotsa smarts to the Xbox 360 console. Price and release date are still TBA, which may have Santa steaming.

Gamers will trigger a Kinect (formerly Project Natal) enhanced system with a wave of the hands or sound of their voice. I'm already thinking that the latter will be tricky, given the sonic blast of combat games, but let's take them at their word.

At the first of several Kinect demos, Microsoft played it easy as a cute little girl played with a virtual, on-screen pet Tiger that mimicked her movements and took verbal commands.

Also ready to Kinect: a race car you steer with your hands in the air as if holding the wheel in the classic "ten and two" positions; plus balancing, dance and fitness games - challenging the popular Wii Fit but requiring no special board or mat.

That Kinect camera will be useful for video chatting, while the motion sensors also let users finger-point to select from a growing number of streaming video, music or chat options available online through Xbox Live. A Live Gold subscription accesses thousands of live and on-demand sporting events from an Xbox-only ESPN channel.

Also introduced, almost as an after thought, was a new Xbox 360 console - smaller, lighter, "whisper quiet" and boasting a doubly large, 250GB hard drive - at the same $299 price as its predecessor and available immediately.

This system doesn't spin Blu-rays, though, like Sony's like-priced PS3. And no mention of 3-D capability, a topic played big at rivals' press conferences.

GAME REWARDS: Electronic Arts was brimming with news, including a new "Medal of Honor" game moving the war action to Afghanistan; the first "EA Sports MMA" fighting game with an online trash-talking component; and a friendly "Madden NFL 11" that lets you play a full game in half the time.

FEEL THIS: French-based Ubisoft threw the most visually attractive and amusing of press conferences building on the theme "Games You Can Feel." Among them, the 3-D ready "Ghost Recon Future Soldier" and "Shaun White Skateboading," wherein good rail-riding cleans up the environment. (Who knew?)

Also offbeat, Ubisoft's bio-feedback-styled stress-reduction game "Innergy" and a leave-the-screen "Gamemaster" in which players run around the room firing away at real opponents with plastic guns and tagging devices as a creature in the game-console/TV-set barks commands.

NINTENDO'S TURN: The company started its conference with a 20-minute preview of "The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword," which won't be available until next year, and saved the biggest news for the end: the first showing of Nintendo 3DS, a handheld, portable game system with a 3.5-inch auto-stereoscopic top screen that produces 3-D imagery without the need for glasses.

While demo hardware looked ready and the system might put a light 3-D whammy on current games, I'm guessing that development of custom 3-D software will keep this as yet unpriced system off the market for a few months. (Nintendo has promised only that 3DS will be out by the end of its fiscal year, March 31, 2011.)

On the way are in-house-crafted 3-D projects like "Kid Icarus Uprising," "nintendogs + cats" and "PilotWings Resorts," plus third-party 3-Dazzlers from the likes of Capcom, Konami, EA, Square Enix, Ubisoft and Namco Bandai.

Also revealed, the 3DS' external dual-lens camera will take 3-D still pictures; the screen could show 3-D movies (Disney, WB and DreamWorks supplied trailers); the portable has new motion and gyro sensors and automatically connects to Wi-Fi and other DS systems; and it boasts an analog Slide Pad for adjusting the 3-D focus point and intensity to taste.

SONY CLEANS UP: While its rivals pushed the "family friendly" button to excess, Sony jockeyed for the hard-core gamers with the themes of added realism and precision play.

Sony will be the first and only game company this year to offer high definition 3-D console games, playing on the already software-upgraded PlayStation 3 and a new-generation 3-D ready TV that Sony will likewise be happy to sell you.

A few 3-D games are already downloadable on the Sony Network (soon to get an upgrade with a pay premium version). And by year's end, about 20 titles viewable in 3-D will be out, including the likes of "MLB 10: The Show," "Fight Club II," "Crysis 2" and "Gran Turismo 5."

Part deux of Sony's higher-tech strategy, more likely to win quick adoption and ready to set sail in September, is a motion-activated peripheral called PS Move. It's another perceived improvement on Nintendo's Wii remote, boasting software support from "more than 40 developers," said Sony exec Jack Tretton.

Think a microphone-styled controller with a glowing ball on the end and buttons on the side, "because gamers need buttons," said a demonstrator. That glowing ball is precisely tracked, it was underscored, by a PlayStation Eye camera plopped on top of your TV.

A Move bundle of camera, controller and a sports-game title will fetch $99. The controller alone will be $50. Sony is pricing its own Move-enabled games at $40, and the same Blu-ray discs also will hold a separate version of the game that functions fine with conventional controllers.

E-mail Jonathan Takiff at takiffj@phillynews.com.

Correction: While no price has been set, Microsoft has announced a November 4 sale date for the Kinect motion control system for Xbox 360.