Microsoft’s experiment in casual game creation, Kodu, is now available in preview form online. PC gamers can download the “Technical Preview” version of the game right here, which features a revamped UI sporting mouse and keyboard controls. Microsoft also added other tweaks, enhancing the “move” verb (allowing for scripted camera movements), “streamlined terrain editing tools” and characters that can respond to mouse and keyboard events.

If you’re a PC gamer wondering what all of the fuss is about, we suggest you check out our video walkthrough. Oh, and do let us know if you come up with any Joystiq-inspired games!

[Via Big Download]

DrPetter, the talented developer behind Deflectorpool and Sfxr, just released an alpha for a new tool, called Sculptris. Sculptris lets you make 3d models quickly and intuitively as shown in the above video. You can export your creations as OBJ files or import OBJ files to use as a base for editing.

It’s really fun to play with. I made this ugly head after messing around for a bit.

This is an alpha, so the good Doctor recommends saving frequently, and reporting any bugs (or general inquiries) to him at the Sculptris forums. According to the readme, the final version is due in early 2010.

As Jim recently took a lengthy look into in his Ragdoll Metaphysics column, the “games on demand” concept of cloud gaming gained a serious foothold during this year’s GDC with demonstrations by startups OnLive and Gaikai, and, he says, “suggests that the days of us buying powerful home processing hardware – be it consoles or PCs – could be numbered.”

Today, former Shiny head David Perry uploads this first video demo of Gaikai and plays — in-browser, with no plugins — Spore, Mario Kart 64 and more via “a remote server with a 800 mile round trip to my PC.”

Perry explains most of the details in the video itself, but also posts some more technical information:

* Data travel distance is around 800 miles (round trip) on this demo as that’s where the server is. I get a 21 millisecond ping on that route. My final delay will be 10 milliseconds as I just added a server in Irvine California yesterday, but it’s not added to our grid yet. (So this demo is twice the delay I personally would get, the good news is I don’t notice it anyway.)

* This server is not hosted by a Tier 1 provider, just a regular Data Center in Freemont California. Also, I’m not cheating and using fiber connections for our demos. This is a home cable connection in a home.

* We designed this for the real internet. The video compression codecs change in realtime based on the need of the application (or game), and based on the hardware & bandwidth you have. (For Photoshop we make sure it’s pixel perfect.)

* Our bandwidth is mostly sub 1 megabit across all games. (Works with Wifi, works on netbooks with no 3D card etc.)

Read more about the demo at Perry’s blog post, where he notes that the company “will start buying bulk servers soon and after that, we will begin closed beta in California, so make sure to sign up at: gaikai.com if you want to help us out.”

Just released by Adam ‘Atomic‘ Saltsman for the benefit of indie devs everywhere: the Flixel engine, an open-source, fully featured, newly updated version of the Flash AS3 library Saltsman used for both his original web hit Gravity Hook, and the most recent Offworld-featured Fathom.

Flixel, which is meant to forgo the Flash IDE entirely, contains a number of improvements to how Flash handles 2D games, with support for spritesheets, baked in basic physics and particle effects, and the procedural map-generation code he used for the deep fathoms of Fathom.

You can dig through Flixel’s documentation via the official home site, and try Mode (above), the included de-Mo (see what he did there?) game that demonstrates the engine’s built-in features.

Flixel [AdamAtomic]

This being E3, there’s been a lot of impressive stuff on show. But nothing as impressive as seeing somebody play Ubisoft’s RUSE on Microsoft’s $20,000 touch-screen “Surface”.

1.) Microsoft unveiled the 3D motion sensing and facial/voice recognizing “controller” project named Natal.

Microsoft promised the moon in its demo video for their Project Natal, carrying the tagline that it would “make ‘you’ the controller” and that, as the controller is the current “barrier separating game players from everyone else,” with Natal, “the only experience you need is life experience.”

As above, Microsoft demoed racing games, fighting games, and simple sports games using full body spatial recognition that let you hold up virtual steering wheels, duck, weave and deliver punches, and kick goals using nothing more than their physical actions.

But the company also took that a step further, promising full facial recognition — demonstrated by walking in front of your TV and having the Xbox 360 instantly log you in to your personal account — and object scanning, like holding up your own skateboard and having it instantly placed in a game. Microsoft added that the system could function just as well in a multiplayer environment.

For real world use, apart from a ringing endorsement by none less than Steven Spielberg, Microsoft called up Fable producer Peter Molyneux to demonstrate Lionhead’s project Milo — a virtual friend that they promised could carry on fluid conversations with full voice and emotion recognition, and demoed sleight of hand tricks like drawing on a piece of paper, holding it up to the Natal sensor, and having Milo “receive” that same paper in the virtual world, with additional recognition of what you’d drawn

It may look a bit like a Wii sensor bar, but it’s something altogether different. Project Natal, as Microsoft is calling it at their 2009 E3 press conference, is a camera and sensor assembly that recognizes faces, body movements, objects, and even voices in order to integrate the player into the gaming environment. Examples shown at the conference include a boy holding up a skateboard, which then appeared on the screen, with the boy then riding said board by just swaying back and forth on his own two feet; two women trying on virtual clothes using a camera image of themselves; facial recognition; voice control; buzzing in to 1 VS 100 by raising a hand;and even browsing the NXE using hand controls as in the movie Minority Report.

Project Natal creative director Kudo Tsunoda took the stage, showing his Xbox Live avatar moving with his movements and playing various tech demos, including a handball game and one that allowed you to paint with stencils.

Development kits are arriving at Microsoft partners today, so while there’s no word on when this amazing technology will actually make it into player’s hands, with developers like Fable’s Peter Molyneux behind it, we can expect great things. Things like this: Molyneux came on stage to present a demonstration of Milo, in which a real woman and a small boy on the screen interact. The boy recognizes her emotions, throwing her a pair of goggles, which she reaches out and grabs.

Everyone at the press conference was floored. This could very well be the sort of show-stopper that Microsoft needs to take home the fictional press conference of the show award.

On top of that, someone managed to film the video and place it on YouTube. That’s below (bad audio)

In the video:

• Grand Turismo, LittleBigPlanet, Jak & Daxter and Metal Gear are all either confirmed or mentioned.
• The Go’s 16 gigs of flash memory and bluetooth support (“You can also tether it to your cell phone,”) are touted.
• PSP Go will not replace the PSP-3000; the 3000 will still be kept on the market.

So, there’s your garden-variety pre-E3 leak/rumor/big splash. Just the facts for now. Thanks to the dozens of tipsters who saw this and alerted us.

GCN Exclusive: Say Hello to the PSP Go [GamersConsoleNetwork]
Qore June edition [YouTube]

A “very well-informed mole” says that there won’t be a PS3 Slim announcement next week at E3, and that the console won’t be in stores until late summer or early fall. Why? “There are plenty of PS3 systems sitting on store shelves right now,” writes Ars Technica, “and Sony is planning on sitting back and allowing the supply of those units to dry up over the summer.”

A cease and desist was sent to Kotaku from Taiwanese attorneys after we posted apparent pics of the rumored PS3 Slim.

Don’t expect a PS3 price cut, Ars Technica adds, but it is still a possibility. This echoes what Crecente said on the Bonus Round about price cuts — that Sony will want to save a price drop for a big announcement at this year’s Tokyo Game Show. It seems to make better sense timing-wise, being close to the holidays. An early summer price drop announcement could paralyze console sales if the price drop did not immediately go into effect.

Mole: PSP-Go details confirmed, smaller PS3 is on the way [Ars Technica via Gizmodo]

Yves Guillemot crossed his name off the list of people who have yet to predict that Apple will become a bigger player in gaming hardware today. He did that as part of his explanation about how he thinks the home console market is going to transform gaming as we know it.

“There’s also a new entrant in the business,” he said, after riffing off the looming gaming potential of set-top boxes. “[That entrant is] Apple, with the iPhone. And we don’t think they will stop there.”

Guillemot made the comments about Apple during Ubisoft’s conference call to report the company’s finanicial results for its fiscal year ended in March. The head of the company behind hits such as Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell has repeatedly addresses the topic of the next generation of consoles in these earnings costs. He touched on it again, when asked by a financial analyst on the call: “We will see more customers coming to the video game industry .. they will start also to come under the boxes you see under the TV because those TV boxes will be more powerful.. We will see more consoles on which we will be able to put products. As for the next generation of consoles we can’t give you a date but from what we see there is a lot of energy to improve the consoles [that are out now.] We are already working on some of the elements that will appeal in the next generation.”

The allusion to the impending importance of gaming via set-top boxes prompted a follow-up question from an anlyst, and this produced more specificity about why the devices like cable boxes might begin to be discussed in the same breath as Xboxes and Wii: “You saw new interfaces with the Wiimote and also with the DS with the stylus,” Guillemot said. “What we see for the future is they will also be big announcement in interfaces. It will not only happen in consoles but also happen on those TV boxes as well.”

And right after that, Guillemot made his remark about Apple.

One of Guillemot’s older brothers, Michel, runs GameLoft, one of the most aggressive developers of games for Apple’s iPhone.

[PIC]