At todays Microsoft Press Conference a few games were announced and a whole new Xbox Live interface was revealed. Honestly, I thought it was one of the weakest press conferences I have ever seen, but read on for a full recap and thoughts on the news and announcements.
So many were awaiting the Microsoft press conference today and I hope they were more impressed than I was. The conference was riddled with sequels and rehashes of games we already know, the big ones being Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5, Final Fantasy 13, and Fable 2. Each developer that was brought on to demo each game seemed rushed and the demo’s seemed rather quick and uneventful.
Then came the announcement about the new Xbox Live interface which was a complete rip off of thw Wii’s Mii Plaza and the PS3’s future HOME. I don’t know about you, but me as a hardcore gamer, am not interested in making yet another avatar. I don’t know, but I think I am a little old for that. Microsoft is usually a little more creative than this.
Then came the even more generic games, we have another Guitar Hero (how about just making the content downloadable from now on, it’s getting ridiculous), yet another karaoke game (do people really play these?) a blatant EyeToy clone (come on, really?!) and you know, just the run of the mill games meant for good time family fun.
Nothing new or original was announced, well the Square guy mentioned a few new games but only mentioned them by name, no description and no video.
The coolest thing was the joining forces with Netflix, I love this b/c I have been a Netflix customer for quite sometime, this will be very convenient.
And really that was it, nothing awesome, nothing we didn’t pretty much already know and nothing jaw dropping. Boo Microsoft…that’s all you got?
July 15th, 2008 at 7:10 am
I wasn’t excited about the avatar thing until they talked about the game shows. I can play 1 vs. 100 with real people? That’s fab.
And yes, the Netflix thing is AWESOME
July 15th, 2008 at 7:16 am
You know, you took the words right out of my mouth with pretty much this whole post. Other than the FFXIII move to Xbox (Saves me $400!), I wasn’t super impressed with anything I read about coming out of that press conference. I am also not a fan of the new Xbox Live interface. I honestly thought it was a joke when I noticed that very Nintendo-like avatar.
Guess I’m going to have to get my Netflicks account back >.>
July 15th, 2008 at 11:09 am
You know what I wonder sometimes. I wonder how spoiled we are being so close to the industry. In otherwords, maybe all of those games WE knew about the rest of the world really wasn’t aware of. People all around the world look to E3 to be the “announcement” time. Maybe all of these games that are old hat to us had their first real face/air time for the general public.
I think every now and again we need to step outside of our box and think about what mainstream may want from something like E3. I think this will be the only way for gaming to grow and to move forward.
Just a thought. /shrug
July 15th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Whoo, Netflix rules!
But that’s pretty lame about the conference, Raychul. =/ Hmm.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:30 am
What??? MS announces a new look for XBL that radically changes the system. The first gameplay footage of RE5 & Fallout 3! Netflix merges with XBL! Fable II! Gears2! Then they drop a bomb, FF13 on 360. The first time since 97 that the main FF franchise jumps ship to another console. Yeah lame sure.
Nintendo announces Animal Crossing for wii and GTA chinatown for DS, which looks to be a top down version of GTA lol. G4 confronted Reggie too. Kevin was mad and said what about us Reggie? Kid Icarus? New Zelda? Morgan too and reggie was saying, what! We gave you Animal Crossing. Sad, lol
July 16th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
the coolest thing i heard was the direct download option theyre gonna add. Being able to play your games straight off of your hard drive is really gonna bring load times down. I was wondering how safe that was gonna be for them seeing as that would just mean people would just rent games and be able to own them as long as they wanted. I did finally read that the disc needed to remain in the system in order for this feature to work.