I missed the first thirty minutes of the Microsoft E3 Press Conference so I had to go back and watch the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 footage. He should have picked up the P90 in the demo. I came in during the Ghost Recon Kinect title and here are how I feel about the games Microsoft has announced:
New Xbox 360 Features That Don’t Matter
- Watching Live TV on your TV (like it should)
- Voice Controlled Bing Search
- Voice Controlled Movie Watching
- YouTube Integration
All these features are on a computer and smartphone so barely any reason to add them to yet another device. I guess good to have but won’t impact their userbase as much as say Netflix did.
Good
- Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary – Time to play the same game again with better graphics. Watch no longer four player multiplayer on one console like the original Halo on Xbox 1.
- Halo 4 – it sells itself in 2 years. Pre-rendered cutscenes are easy.
- Mass Effect 3 voice commands. Meat-shield move up.
- Disneyland Adventures – It made me want to go to Disneyland so that’s effective marketing
- Kinect Sports Football – Those actors/developers on stage really are into the football. Even though the plays feel scripted, the game looks like fun.
Bad
Kinect Star Wars – graphics much worse than Rogue Squadron
o Horribly slow Kinect gestures
o Force “Nudge” barely moved the Droid Tank
o Reflect all lasers by swinging lightsaber crazily
• Welcome to your destiny of a mediocre game
Fable Journey – I would describe it as an on-rails Kinect “shooter”
Meh
Sesame Street : Once Upon a Monster – We learned cannibalistic tendencies of Cookie Monster. He ate the delicious pink fluffballs and show had gained like 300 pounds in this game.
Gears of War 3 – The only part of the live demo which was interesting was when Marcus and company shot the boss’s eye and there were eye guts falling out. The rest was on par with previous game and the graphics looked slightly dated.
Best moment was where the Dance Central 2 guy came out and left the dancing to the professionals. It was just too bad the Dance Central 2 footage was soo short but at least it will be on the show floor to play later. Please remember I care about big budget titles and action so of course most of the Microsoft conference wasn’t targeting my demographic. Overall I was satisfied with Microsoft’s presentation and of course am super interested in Sony’s Next Generation Portable and Nintendo’s new Wii 2 (whatever it will be called). I will be posting the Sony conference later in the day hopefully since am super busy.
