Last week saw Kinect Sports Rivals get a little continental with a trip to Paris Games Week. Attendees had the chance to trial Kinect Sports Rivals Preseason, which goes live alongside the Xbox One launch later in November. Producers and EG Expo veterans Mike and Adam were once again our men on the scene, and once again Mike brought us back some lovely words…
At the very end of October, the Kinect Sports Rivals promotional bandwagon rolled into Paris with Rare’s very own Ant and Dec (supposedly I’m Ant) sent over to entertain the crowds and give away five more opportunities to become a Champion at launch.
We arrived on Tuesday. With VIPs and press getting early access to the pre-Paris Games Week party, we set up two kits with the just-announced Preseason build ready for an evening of games and responsible drinking. The constant queue kept us busy until midnight.
Wednesday at 9am, the doors to Paris Games Week literally swung open. With a total of four kits to keep the masses entertained, we needed help. In stepped the boundless enthusiasm of our Xbox demo crew who handled all the non-English speaking gamers, which turned out to be the vast majority of attendees.
Even though we were exploiting the split screen game mode in Preseason, the queue time quickly rose to almost an hour. We did our best to hand out bags, wristbands and stickers, but nothing entertained the queue quite as much as us competing head-to-head, complete with our now trademarked ‘bants’.
When a player managed to get lap time of quicker than 1:02, they earned the chance to be invited on stage in front of the huge audience to compete for the ultimate Champion creation prize. I demoed the most effective way to play the game before we got two qualifying players on stage to race for the best lap. At the end of all the face-offs, we were left with five winners who’ll be visiting Rare to get themselves scanned and installed as in-game Champions in the next few weeks, so check back to read about how they get on.
With interviews and previews from Paris Games Week now starting to appear, the only thing that still needs to be said is a huge thank you to all the French gamers, the Xbox France team and the event organisers for making us feel so welcome.
The latest KSR build now moves on across the continent to Madrid Games Week, if you’re close by and want to get hands-on with the Preseason edition before release. As for us, we’re taking a well-deserved break from the promotional circuit to focus on the small task of finishing the game…
Zut alors!
