Sorry for the sudden drop in press conference information from me, I had a doctor’s appointment to go to.
Now that we have that out of the way…Microsoft had a really nice showing. Here are the important things that I’m taking away from this press conference:
- The improvements made to the Xbox 360’s interface, which will be launching this fall, really upstage Sony’s recent 2.41 update. In my opinion, the Xbox 360 now has a feature set that equals Sony’s Home in every way that I care about. We had been clamoring for 4 player chat, and we ended up getting 8 player chat! We can stream Netflix movies to other people in our buddy group! We already had the ability to check out achievements and the ability to invite friends to a game at any time! Aren’t those the big features of Home? To be able to share video content, chat with multiple friends at once, and to compare Trophies? Score one for Microsoft here…they have created a way for all of that to happen, but cut out all of the overkill Second Life-esque stuff in the middle.
- Major game release dates were announced. Gears 2, Fable 2, Rock Band 2, Resident Evil 5, Lips, Geometry Wars 2, all of the Square-Enix stuff…really, I don’t know how anyone can argue that Microsoft doesn’t have a triple-A cast of games hitting this Fall, and into the future.
- Unfortunately, there were also some big games missing: Halo Wars and Alan Wake failed to show up. In my opinion, we really need to question whether or not Alan Wake still exists, at this point. Also, we didn’t get any news about the big update that Bungie was supposed to make. If you take a look over at Bungie.net, there is a clock counting down to a time that is about 2 days away, so I suppose we’ll need to wait until then to make any judgments about what Bungie was supposed to announce during E3, but I was hoping for a big game reveal during the Microsoft keynote.
- The announcement that Final Fantasy 13 is headed to the Xbox 360 is absolutely gigantic. We have been counting on Sony to have two big franchise games exclusive to their console: Metal Gear Solid 4, and Final Fantasy 13. Now that FF13 is gone, I’m really questioning if MGS4 will stay. Apparently the smaller disc sizes and slightly weaker processing power of the Xbox 360 is no longer daunting to developers.
- The Netflix announcement is also a very big deal, since a ton of people will now be able to look at the Xbox 360, and see that it makes a very compelling case to be the only box you need attached to your TV. I don’t know if the Netflix service on the Xbox 360 will allow for High Definition content, but if it does at some point, then that is a huge win for Microsoft.
- I’m floored by how well Microsoft segued their conference from hardcore gamer-focussed games in the early part of the show, to their family/social games, through the reveal of their plans for the Fall dashboard update. I’m extremely impressed by how well they are supporting both the core gamer and the casual gamer demographics…I just hope that the Wii crowd is willing to drop their Wiimotes for a while and take notice.
I personally expect that Sony will not be able to top this press conference, but we will need to wait and see. All I can say at this point is that Microsoft has set the bar very, very high for what we should expect from the big three companies this year.
