E3: Microsoft's Press Conference

So the Microsoft's press conference is over, and here's a brief summary of what they showed and what you can expect to hear and see more about in the next few days as the actual E3 starts and the floor opens. I'm just going to list these things, anything else would be crazy.

Beatles Rockband, Ringo and Paul on stage.
Tony Hawk Ride with the new skateboard controller.
Modern Warfare 2 played on stage, looks cold.
Final Fantasy XIII (13), in English and played on Xbox 360, aiming for Spring 2010. Shows a never before seen Odin summon.

At this point the presenter dude came back and boasted how the next bunch of games will be exclusive for 360. I think he actually means exclusive in console market, rather than entirely exclusive, because PC doesn't count.

Shadow Complex XBLA game played on stage, bugs out a the end turning a big boss creature invisible. Got to love live demos.
Joy Ride trailer, apparently free XBLA game that uses Avatars.
Crackdown 2 trailer.
Left 4 Dead 2 trailer, game lands in November, probably 2009. Also coming to PC.
Splinter Cell Conviction played on stage, looks nice enough. 3 red dots instead of traditional 3 green dots.
Forza Motorsport 3, nice cars, lots of car skinning available.
Halo 3: ODST played on stage. I still think Recon was better subtitle, but they probably wanted to properly separate it from...
Halo: Reach. A brief glimpse of that is shown. Falls 2010.
Alan Wake, also coming Spring 2010. Introduced by Sam Lake (Sami Järvi) and played by some other dude. Looks like light is also a weapon, kind of like this one very obscure game called Obscure.
Metal Gear Solid: Rising coming to 360, starring Raiden. No more info than that. Hideo Kojima on stage, looking happy as always. It wasn't specifically mentioned in this section, but might be 360 exclusive since all the games were supposed to be that after FF13. But who knows.

And that's the games. Other things they showed were some interesting (I guess) social networking options that are coming to Xbox Live, such as Twitter, last.fm and Facebook. So now you'll be able to tell all your Twitter and Facebook buddies when you unlock new achievements! WOO?!?! Uh yeah. Also, taking screenshots of games and posting them to Facebook. That's pretty neat actually, if I heard that right. Also, Some Netflix stuff I know nothing about. Zune Video, brings FullHD 1080p streams. A lot more countries added to video services.

And last but not least, the new controller. They call it Project Natal and the tagline is "You are the controller." That's right. They are trying this thing with some new camera and motion detection tech. Also has facial and voice recognition. It's interesting and looks impressive for sure, but I'm not quite sure I want to play my games like that though. Some dissing at the Wii's "waggle" controls. The trailer for this controller looks very family oriented, clearly taking on Nintendo here. Some interesting tech demonstrations on how the movement recognition works, doesn't look half bad for an unfinished project.

And that, as they say, is that.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on June 01st 2009 at 3:15pm