So, Monday. Wow. It all started with the leak of the new Xbox console (thanks to some over eager Italian advertisers) which quickly turned into bizarrely timed USA Today articles leaking the name of Natal (and its games). And then there was that Microsoft show, which required space-aged Mexican garb and a massive leap of faith. Or drugs.
In fact, despite being Microsoft’s chance to shine, their press conference was a complete damp squib. A gaming division forged on hardcore games (and a hardcore following) threw it all against the wall and decided 10 minutes of Halo and Gears was enough, and then bored most of the attendees stupid with legions of motion controlled fluff.
Still, at least they did a MicroOprah, saving the only cheer for the generous but incredibly shallow act of giving all the still present seated a free Xbox. For everyone else, the Xbox is shipping now, unless, of course, you’re not in the 10% of the World’s population that lives in America, in which case the new smaller, slimmer model is due the month after.
And if you don’t like the new model, you’d best get out and grab yourself an ‘old’ 360 now, as they’re not making them anymore meaning that the classic white versions are now SUPER R@RE and outdated. And we can only assume they’ll work with Kinect, which, should you wish to inspect your Ferrari’s lights by waving your hands around, is due in November.
Still, EA’s conference, by all accounts, was much better, revealing the new Need For Speed game, a decent BulletStorm trailer, the first half of the Dead Space 2 trailer (which continues today at Sony’s do) and Ubisoft’s bash, which we’re currently typing up, has already ‘won’ for some members of TSA by featuring the follow up to Rez. Well, me anyway.
You can follow all our extensive, unrivaled E3 coverage right here. Sony and Nintendo are up next…
Foxhound_Solid
Its almost like Sony knew how little MS has to show. Feel a tad sorry for them filling their show with non exclusive games….
Roll on Sony Show – think its gonna be awesome.
THANKS
Foxhound_Solid
THANKS TSA FOR SOME AWESOME COVERAGE. BEST GAMES SITE EVER!!
Dr_mohannad
Evaaaar
jikomanzoku
Yeah I’ll happily sign myself up in agreement with that – great work, great site, great community – long may it last.
ericzap
Agree x1000. TSA somehow sorts through all the fluff and puts up the info I want to know about.
tonycawley
Still finding it hard to imagine what sony still have up their sleeve after all the announcements pre-e3. Should be a fun day :-) especially since ms managed to fail. And yes, that’s the correct use of the word fail!
chrome31533
No its more or less “Epic Fail”
Topgearsam
microsofts showing was so dull half the press confrence was about some terrible natal games
Radboud
indeed
And the only “game” that really did something with the 3D aspect of Kinect was Ubisoft’s fitness game….
benny boy
Yeah, that was the only thing that impressed me. The way it scanned your body and took all your measurements was amazing. That’s if it is real. If that was staged then not a single thing impressed me about Kinect.
gurglesletch
more like 9/10 not half.
Doddsy
By the way, it’s not damp squid but instead damp squib.
That confusion really annoys me x]
tonycawley
Lol. I noticed that too but thought i’d better not say anything as i’m forever pulling people up on their use of the language on here.
jikomanzoku
Mid-drift got me t’other day, the mental image of Laura Croft hitting middle age taking up smoking and getting fat on pies and beer had me in stitches.
jikomanzoku
Lara rather, hohohoho.
Radboud
Really agree on the general concensus on the MS Show…
I mean, the guy that was showing of the selection method for Zune and stuff, he had to hold his hands on his legs otherwise Kinect might pick them up as input :s.
Really got the feeling of “Eyetoy Play 3 HD” which in fact was faster at selecting than Kinect.
EA had a good show. Can’t wait for Sony’s!
spooferbarnabas
Disappointed with MS in general. I thought EA were good (except for the Sims and all that psychology crap). I haven’t seen any of Ubi’s yet.
I would be really disappointed if Sony had a poor show, especially after MS failed miserably. I want more on KZ3!
cc_star
Ubi’s was bad… Highlights may be alright but sitting through it was worse than pulling your own teeth out
Raen
Why was there dancing? WHY?!
cc_star
EA had a gamers show for gamers it’s not surprising that the impression is that they have won so far.
Microsoft showed off what will be the years biggest selling games in CoD, Halo & Gears but as we already knew about them they didn’t seem like the fresh surprising announcements that we become used to from them. The one surprise was the potentially awesome Crytek exclusive Codename: Kingdoms.
Then of course was their motion stuff which just doesn’t sit well with their core audience or the predominantly Sony fanbase on TSA, but everything I saw in the Kinect presentation worked well.
Kinectimals looked amazing, kinda like the EyePet but it actually worked
Forza showed that Kinect is capable of doing ultra responsive 60fps racers which just aren’t possible with input lag.
One of the most amazing things was the Kinect dropin/out co-op which automatically splits the screen when someone jumps in the game space and becomes whole again if someone jumps out (this is patented by MS)
Kinect Adventures looked exactly the sort of fun experience which has shifted 50m Wii consoles and Kimect Sports captured everything that was great about Wii Sports and brought it up to date.
Then there was the whole UI stuff which worked seemlessly, sign in to Xbox Live just by waving at it, point at stuff to select it and use just your voice for pretty much everything else
There was also the announcement that ESPN was available go all Gold subscribers
Video chat has been around for ages and is a pretty useless app by itself but MS may just have found a way to make it worthwhile, first off it’s all voice controlled something the mic array handled perfectly even in the rather weird stage conditions which must be far from ideal, but the picture in picture watch a movie/sports/Sky/Canal+/ESPN together worked really well.
It seems pretty obvious that Kinect’s reach will extend far beyond the reach of the Xbox and gaming.
So I’d say Microsofts conference was actually pretty fun of win, it just happens to be mainly win away from website reading game-geeks that we are, and other than Crytek’s Kingdoms it lacked the actual surprises of previous years.
Raen
I’m still expecting them to limit ESPN to the US. I’d love it if they didn’t, I really like basketball, but I’m just kinda expecting them to.
bunimomike
I have never, ever had a problem with EyePet working and have always been confused at such comments. I didn’t even have a perfect set-up. However, Kinectimals was completely staged so I’ll be interested to see how a real demo of that pans out.
*goes to find out more about drop in and out racing. Sounds great*
Raen
Anyone who stayed up for Ubi’s conference will join me in the shout of: “What the hell was that?”
AG2297
Yep! It seemed to get worse as it went along as I felt it started quite strongly when AC: Brotherhood etc was on. The crazy ideas that followed were really “wtf?” moments.
BioEye
I’m exhausted from all the crying.
Apnomis
Watched both the MS and EA conferences, and IMO MS are already knocked into second place by EA even though EA said they weren’t trying to compete with the ‘big 3’ conferences. They had a really solid lineup and a really good selection of stage demos – they’ve already sold me some games that weren’t on my radar…
dextreme08
Just out of interest does the split screen co op do it if someone walks through the room? Or does it quit your single player game? It’s a good idea to show off with but I would rather set up a new game 90% of the time anyway to change the difficulty/game mode etc.
cc_star
Difficulty automatically adjust, and you can walk through the game space without co-op activating, its only if you stand there for a second that the screen auto splits
jikomanzoku
Guess it depends on how each individual title is coded, whether they implement drop-in drop-out co-op a la Borderlands in their title.