Microsoft seemed to display a weird mixture of confidence and arrogance mixed with some subtle desperation.
The conference began very well. The indy band "Coporeal" played an arrangement based on the "Halo" theme. The band was great (I'm a sucker for a hit chick and a fiddle) and really set the mood well. We know what "Halo" means to MS and expect to hear about it again and again... and again. MS, perhaps as a not-so-subtle jab at Sony's seemingly always "future" plans, only showed titles that would be available this year (with "Resident Evil 5" as the sole exception). Peter Moore completely embarrassed himself (and not in a good way) by displaying that he simply has no idea how to play "Rock Band". (This is a good point to express simple truth: we're not idiots. We know that you heads of industry are busy people. We don't need to be fooled that you spend as much time playing games as we do. To bring us the games you have sacrifice playing them. We get it, stop pretending.) We spent a whole bunch of time with powerpoint. The crux of it was "we're doing better than anybody else... really!". They talk about installed base, software sales, the power of their third parties, etc. Some of the more esoteric numbers are presented with large graphics clearly designed to show the Wii in a marginal position. It's a nice overview but the extended length and repetition seemed to make it more desperate than necessary. There's a new "Viva Pinata" game coming. Sort of. It's (to me) a clearly Wii-inspired minigame collection based on this great franchise that unfortunately nobody seems to care about. We did get a peek at something actually new: a family game based on the "Scene It!" DVD games. The game will be shipped with four "big button" controllers (with no increase in price) for easy party play. Sounds like it might be fun and does represent something, if not truly innovative, then at least new and interesting. There seem to be some great games coming to Xbox Live Arcade but we get not more than a few seconds of each. Even "Space Giraffe" (by Jeff Minter, creator of "Tempest 2000") gets no outward mention - that's one game they should be shouting about from the rooftops. There were a lot of great looking games, but nothing really unexpected. There was a gorgeous, but wince inducing demo of "Assassin's Creed". The demo had some really odd animations and a few obvious bugs (the most of obvious of which had a corpse floating in mid-air). I trust Ubi enough that despite this it's already a "must buy" for me (albeit most likely on the PS3). They announced that they've gained Disney Studios as a provider for the Xbox Live video service. This is a mixed blessing for those of use still suffering with the original 14 Gig of drive space and unwilling to be prison-raped to upgrade to the $200 120 Gig drive. We're basically left with the choice of watching an HD movie via XBL or downloading game demos. There's absolutely no reason beyond greed that the 360 couldn't be made to recognize and user USB-based storage. The conference ends with a steaming pile of "Halo". Peter Moore announces a green "special edition" XBox 360 which goes over like a lead balloon with a concrete string. Apparently the special edition unit won't even contain the game it's being made for? He clearly expected a better reaction and the obvious question is "why"? A live-action "Halo" trailer produced by Weta is shown. Honestly I was underwhelmed... the game looks better than this did. Finally we got an unfortunately pretty frenetic "Halo 3" video montage. We see lots of locations but get no real sense of the game itself. Of course we really don't need one... the game would sell if shipped in brown paper and string. It was a good conference that began very strong and ended very weak. We got a great sense of this year but absolutely nothing about the future. Since that's a future when, presumably, the PS3 and Wii will have fully come into their own I think MS made a mistake here. I would have liked to see some indication that they were preparing for it. As for the system itself there was almost nothing of substance. No mention of the hardware problems or the measures being taken to address them. No mention of new integration possibilities (beyond xBox Live for Vista). I was hoping for more. Perhaps some Zune/Xbox video integration? Maybe a motion-sensitive controller? Something? All told it was more of the same from MS. Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 The most significant release in over 10 years. Upgrade & see new features. http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion?sdid=RVJR Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:238260 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
