Microsoft E3 Round-up

A sure and solid performance, apart from the earth-shattering megaton at the end.
Published 15/07/2008 at 8:44 by nofi
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Sure, the Final Fantasy XIII announcement was a well timed, perfectly executed kick to Sony’s bollocks, but what else did Microsoft have to show during their presentation?  Let’s see.

  • Fallout 3 – Bethesda’s (Oblivion) massive third person adventure.  Was demoed, looked great, also coming to PS3, although the 360 version will get exclusive DLC.
  • Resident Evil 5 – Again, demoed on 360 hardware, but also coming to PS3 – release date is March 13th, 2009.
  • Fable 2 – The follow up to the Xbox’s cool action RPG is obviously 360 exclusive, and will land in October this year.  Again, gameplay was demoed.
  • Gears of War 2 – Never really interested me, to be honest, although I did finish the original in co-op and had a fun time.  Obviously exclusive to 360, and looked stunning.
  • Expansion of the Live-powered movie rental download service.  Something Sony have to announce tonight, and they have to have the partners signed up ready to go.
  • New Avatar interface.  It’s like Home-lite, but it’s clearly a lot slicker and better looking, in our opinion.  There’ll be Avatar integration in games, too.  Live Party sounds good too.   Again, Sony needs to get Home out to the masses, and today.
  • Various Live Arcade titles: a follow up to Geo Wars, new Galaga and what appears to be a semi-sequel to Portal.  We’re desperately hoping the PS3 will get this at some point (it’s exclusive for 2008) or we’re buying a 360.
  • Netflix.  Say no more.
  • Plenty of casual games: Banjo, Lips, Scene It! and the EyeCreate-like You’re In The Movies.  Rock Band 2 will be out first on the 360, again.
  • And then, of course, Square Enix, with stacks of JRPG support for the 360, including the bastion of the PS3: Final Fantasy XIII.  Everyone we’ve spoken to since had no idea this was happening.

And that’s that.  Regardless of your fanboy leanings, this was a good show, nothing really new but lots of exclusives, which is what we think will be driving sales this generation.  As we’ve said before, Sony, over to you.

Comments

Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.

  1. If thats it from M$cro$hite then I’m still not getting that console, as for FFXIII – I still feel Sony knew it was going multi platform, Sony has its own big guns, yeah sure Sony are slow in getting things off the ground, but like they said “being 1st doesn’t make you a winner in the long run”, Sony has its 10yr plan(well 8 and half year plan now)and shooting your load to quickly is never a good thing, Sony Likes to tease and slowly make love to us over a period of months n years, where as m$cr0$hite gives you a load in your face all at once then nothing for months on end leaving all the jism junkies to starve.
    ahem – im sure you know what i mean.


  2. I feel a little bit sickly after reading that comment.


  3. The netflix announcement was the most significant for me…. I’ve never played FF and I don’t think it would be my kind of thing


  4. @Michael:
    Ha Ha! well i wouldn’t want any m$cro$oft jizz anywhere near me either.


  5. Just to cut in on NOFI being taken over by MS Jizz, but that was not a strong show the nintendo show was strong and stable, the MS show was poor 2 exclusives gears 2 and fable and both looked like 1.5 rather than sequels.

    The rest was stale new live was not interesting at all and the new family games look lacklustre. If you dont own an xbox there was nothing in that show that was going to make you buy one. I am not a fanboy.


  6. I think I agree with Jack, actually. Whilst FF was a big thing for some people, it was hardly THAT big, it went multi, not exclusive. Everything else was either unoriginal, a multiplatform sequel or an overblown sequel to an overrated game. Portal 1.5 is the only interesting thing to me, really.

    It was still better than Sony’s though ¬¬