Microsoft pushed its motion control system in a big way at Monday’s press conference. Along with Kinect support for Mass Effect 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, the company announced a host other games that enable us to fling ourselves around our living rooms.

Crytek’s codenamed project, Kingdoms, first revealed at last year’s E3, was unveiled as Ryse, a cinematic, Romanesque visceral action game designed for Kinect. Microsoft also announced that Peter Molyneux is finally integrating Fable and Kinect with Fable: Journeys. Set five years after the events of Fable III, the game will allow players to use Kinect to craft and control magic that “can’t be done with a standard controller.” Along with the previously announced Kinect-controlled Sesame Street game, Microsoft also revealed that it’s also allied itself with Disney. In Kinect Disneyland, players will be able to fully explore a digital recreation of the theme park.

Microsoft also announced that Kinect Fun Labs will be making its way to the Xbox 360. Accessible through Xbox Live, the new hub for all things Kinect will offer the very latest features for the device, including full body scanning for avatars and 3D drawing.

Sega and Gearbox have finally ended the wait for those patiently hoping for the next new Aliens game. Aliens: Colonial Marines will release sometime in the spring of 2012 for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Colonial Marines will continue the movie plot of James Cameron’s 1986 blockbuster Aliens, allowing players to join a squad of soldiers as they face the lethal alien menace. Gearbox (creators of Brothers in Arms and Borderlands) promises a co-op squad shooter that pits players against the Xenomorphs, perhaps the most feared enemy in science fiction.

Aliens are among us again! News has emerged of the XCOM reboot, the latest in the franchise, created by the brains behind Bioshock and Bioshock 2. Featuring a bold new origin story told from a first-person perspective, XCOM pits Special Agent William Carter and his veteran team against invaders threatening human extinction. Every enemy is an opportunity; players strike surgically against the alien menace, capture their technology, and by the science of desperation, turn their weapons against them. Armed with these lethal new tools of war, players command their squad on XCOM’s front line: Main Street, USA. “I’m pleased to announce today that we will be bringing this experience to an even broader audience when XCOM comes to the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in March 2012,” says Christoph Hartmann, publisher 2K’s president.

Age of Empires Online is ready to be herded out of beta and onto PCs worldwide on August 16. The game, which will initially launch with the Greek and Egyptian factions, will be available both at retail and online. The freemium title ($19.99 if purchased at retail) boasts more than 40 hours of free co-op and competitive gameplay. Expansions for other civilizations and different game modes will be made available via micro-transactions. Expect monthly premium content that ranges from $4.99 to $9.99 in the form of booster packs and items to outfit your capital city.

Crimson Alliance has been officially announced by its developer, Austin, Texas-based Certain Affinity. The title will be an action role-playing game (with a heavy emphasis on combat over character interaction), and will debut this summer.

“[Crimson Alliance] takes everything we’ve learned about high action from working on shooters like Halo and Call of Duty, and everything we love about the fantasy genre, but gets rid of all that tedious backpack rummaging, and boring dialog!” says a Certain Affinity statement.

The game will support four-person co-operative play via Xbox Live or locally, but it is unclear if it will be a strictly downloadable title like Certain Affinity’s last offering, Age of Booty.

Time flies! It will soon be Elder Scrolls: Oblivion‘s fifth birthday, and to celebrate ahead of the release of Skyrim, Bethesda is releasing an anniversary bundle. This will include the Oblivion Game of the Year version, which features all of the available DLC. It will also come in a steel case with a “making of” DVD, a map of Cyrodiil from the Collector’s Edition, and a $10 coupon towards The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The Oblivion Fifth Anniversary Edition currently appears on both Overstock and Amazon’s US shops for $30 with a release date of June 28. A European bundle has not yet been announced.

Could the next Alan Wake adventure end up on Xbox Live Arcade? XBLAFans has allegedly seen screenshots and reports that it will be called Alan Wake’s Night Springs. Night Springs is the name of the TV show in the world of Wake. Earlier this month, developer Remedy confirmed that a new Alan Wake release is on its way, but that it isn’t a retail sequel or downloadable content. Such a statement seems to square with this new rumour, which will presumably result in a standalone release. Best buy some new batteries for your flashlight, just in case.

Dragon Age 3 has been confirmed by a tweet from BioWare advertising for artists to work on the new instalment of the RPG series. “I’m looking for exceptional environment artists to join me at BioWare Edmonton, Canada to work on DragonAge3,” BioWare’s Senior Director of Creative Development Alistair McNally tweeted. The second game sets up a third game in the series.

A new teaser website, Carmageddon.com (registered to Square-Enix), has a countdown. The timer is clicking down to 10 am GMT on June 1. By my calculations, that’s about a week before E3. It’s been quite awhile since any activity in this franchise. For those of you too young to remember, the last Carmageddon was a racing game that encouraged you to be an aggressive driver. You could win a race by out-driving your opponents, wrecking them, or killing all the pedestrians on the map. By GTA standards, the violence was somewhat tame, but back then it still caused quite a stir (as did the merger of AOL and Time Warner in the very same year). Start revving your engines!

2K Games has announced that the BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den DLC will finally be coming to the PC on May 31. This is 8 months after the Xbox DLC release! The announcement was filed under “better late than never.” The DLC will cost 800 Microsoft Points and will be available for purchase/download through Game for Windows Live. The update will bring with it a bunch of new achievements and a suitable conclusion to the BioShock 2 story.

The Gun Sonata DLC pack for Bulletstorm is now available for purchase/download through Games for Windows Live. Bulletstorm is a score-attack first-person shooter that rewards players big points for chaining together elaborate and incredibly brutal kill combos with over-sized guns and ridiculous physics. The first DLC pack for the over-the-top Epic shooter adds two new Echoes maps – Guns of Stygia and Crash Site, and three new multiplayer Anarchy maps: Hotel Elysium, Villa and Sewers. This latest DLC will cost you $9.99.

A new section on the Command & Conquer forums, the Community Developer Area, has been opened. The company believes that many of its community members have great ideas on how to improve the future of the series, and have created a place to discuss these ideas with those involved in actually making it better. The most discussed and loved ideas will be passed on to the developer team. Maybe it will be your idea, that changes everything!

Taken another way does this mean EA has finally run out of ideas for its C&C franchise?

The newly released Speedhunters DLC for Shift 2 Unleashed features a whole new career path, with new game modes, cars and tracks inspired by Speedhunters.com, one of the top car culture sites in the world. In Drag Races, you battle for the fastest time on a quarter-mile track, while in Standing Mile you’re aiming for the fastest speed on a mile-long circuit. Speedhunters is available now for 800 Microsoft Points on Xbox LIVE Marketplace or for $9.99 on the PlayStation Network (when the PlayStation Store is restored).

The Retaliation map pack for Crysis 2 has been released, giving you more of the Big Apple to bite off and chew. The pack adds four new levels: Park Avenue, Transit, Shipyard and Compound. Each map introduces a new iconic New York City location and gives you more opportunities to deploy the Nanosuit 2’s armor, strength and cloak modes against a terrifying alien invasion that threatens humanity. The Retaliation map pack is available for download on the Xbox 360 for 800 Microsoft points or on PC for $9.99, and is coming soon to the PlayStation Network. For more information, please visit the game’s official site.

A PAX gameplay demo trailer for Big Huge Games’ upcoming third-person hack-and-slash RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, has been released. The game is being led by Oblivion‘s lead designer, Ken Rolston, and also features the work of Spawn creator Todd McFarlane. The trailer showcases several locations and creatures, but primarily focuses on examples of how the title employs swordplay and magic in combat.