E3 2008 Microsoft Press Conference Thoughts

July 15, 2008 · Filed Under Articles, News, PC, Xbox 360

Here we are at E3 time again. Microsoft once again started the show with their press conference, and pretty much anything would be better than last year’s snooze fest at the high school. Thankfully, this year was hosted at E3, but was it any better?

The press conference kicked off with a great start. We got trailers & gameplay from Fable 2, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 & Resident Evil 5, which were nice, but not a whole lot we hadn’t seen before. Getting a look at Fallout 3 actually being played was comforting to see they pulled it off right. Bethesda seems to be trying to make a game for everyone, AND they may just actually be able to pull it off. Play it in first person, third person, as a shooter, as a thief, with real-time combat or strategic targeting. It all seemed to work nicely in the demo.

After those game, at only a few small points in the presentation did the audience even clap and applaud a little bit, much less enthusiastically. Those brief moments were at the announcement of Portal: Still Alive, RockBand 2 offerings (including Guns and Roses, AC/DC and Metallica), and Square Enix announcing Final Fantasy XIII for the 360. Basically PC gaming got the shaft. Oh wait… I think they might have mentioned Fallout 3 was also PC. It was hard to tell, I kept nodding off.

The rest of the time was basically summed up as blah, blah, ugh, blah, ugh, ugh, blah! Seriously.

I think Microsoft was thinking their big announcement was the Mii-vatars, no Ava-Miis, no Wii-60 Avatars. Something like that. Just imagine your Nintendo Miis created by Rare for the Xbox 360. Oh, and steal the interface from the iPod/iPhone, and viola, you have the new 360 dashboard and Avatars. Beyond that, you have brand new party games that have been done before like Sing Star, wait I mean Lips.

But hands down, the best part about their conference actually had NOTHING to do with gaming. Netflix is teaming up with Microsoft to add their streaming library to the 360 for subscribers! Now that’s awesome, and I can’t wait to stream movies through my Xbox 360.