BitSnark

In an effort to perhaps stem the tide of casual titles for Kinect, Microsoft today announced in conjunction with Capcom that a new installment of the dormant Steel Batallion franchise would arrive on the 360 sometime next year; and would be built from the ground up for the upcoming motion control system.

It’s official title is Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor.

When it launched in 2002, the original was a decidedly hardcore mech sim that gained substantial noteriety by being playable only with a terrifyingly large controller made specially for the game which encompassed two control sticks and forty or so buttons.

Yep it was crazy, it was expensive but it also felt decidely… authentic. With that in mind it’ll be interesting to see how Kinect support will work for this.

If they are looking to recreate the complex control system from the previous games, presumably there will have to be some kind of on-screen interface for the player to interact with.

Speculation at this stage is all we have to go on, as outside of a release date and the promise of Kinect support, the only other thing we have to go on is this pre-rendered, detail-bereft trailer:

More on this soon.