The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was last week in Las Vegas, and there was some interesting gaming news, one of which that stood out to me in particular was the Avatar Kinect coming this Spring from Microsoft.

It does what the name suggests, combines the Kinect motion camera with your avatar, but does it in a way that is pretty amazing. Not only does the camera track your movements, but also your facial expressions. It really is cool; it is kind of like video chatting, but instead of seeing each other, you interact with each other’s avatars. This would make me all the more likely to use the video chat piece of Kinect.

I know many of my Xbox Live friends, but others I only know from gaming, so I’m not too keen on video chatting with people I really don’t know. You can also put your avatars in different settings, and record your interaction if you want to. You can check out the video below of it in action. I’m looking forward to trying it out, although I’m not excited to see my giant eyebrows moving all over the place.

It’s nice to see GWAR getting some attention lately. They’re getting some good coverage online, starting with the brilliant Christmas video we posted here the other day.

Following that awesome abuse of Christmas Carols, comes this video filmed by GameInformer who aimed to find out whether GWAR could successfully use the new Kinect system for Xbox 360.

Following their attempts of gaming, and the attempted rape of a Wampa (yes), GWAR tour the GI offices and nobody is free from the abuse they hurl their way. Another epic video from GWAR, let’s hope we see more.

You can check out the video by clicking the image below.

We have a couple of announcements out of Microsoft today. We have expected for a while that the motion controller, Kinect, would run $150. Well that was confirmed by Microsoft today. The controller would come with Kinect Adventures. Kinect launches November 4th.

Also announced today is an arcade version on the redesigned Xbox 360. This will run one penny shy of $200. It’s actually not a bad buy. It’s the same console as the $300 version, built in wifi, wireless controller, the whole bit. Difference is there is only 4 gigs of flash memory as opposed to a 250 gig hard drive. The new arcade console launches August 4th.

The best deal is the Kinect with Arcade bundle. Basically smash the above two paragraphs together and you get what’s in this bundle. This bundle launches same day as Kinect, November 4th.

During the now-closed E3 2010 video game convention, both Microsoft and Sony showed off their motion-based gaming systems, primed and ready to try and compete with the Nintendo Wii.

Sony brought to the table their PlayStation Move, some impressive demonstrations of games it will be compatible with, and even a rundown of prices for each of the bundles that will be available. On the other side, Microsoft brought their own Project Natal, shared that it would now be called “Kinect” instead, and showed off some of the games and features that it would hold. The curious thing about Microsoft is that they seemed to be keeping the price tag their own special secret.

Now the word is out: Amazon is now accepting pre-orders for the Microsoft Kinect system, and it will run you a not-so-cool $149.99.

As usual, Star Wars made a big splash at E3 2010. And not just a big splash with one single title, but with THREE new upcoming titles that they were there to show off.

As you may have saw here before E3, a new cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II showed up. That by itself was pretty insane, but it was also just the start of a week that should have Star Wars fans drooling everywhere.

Aside from Force Unleashed, the other massive game that’s been in development at LucasArts for a long, long time is of course Star Wars: The Old Republic. We have seen a lot of goodies and gameplay for the RPG/MMO title starting at last year’s E3, but the folks from Bioware and EA reloaded and returned set to top themselves with an amazing new cinematic trailer.

Use the Schwartz to get yourselves over to the other side to see this trailer and much more as well!