E3: Microsoft

I just watched Microsoft's E3 Press Conference (thank you G4) and I have to say - I think I need to separate XBox 360 from the rest of M$, they seem to be less evil. Well, with the exception of the project natal camera with facial and voice recognition. As Kevin Perrera said, "this is some skynet level stuff".

They started showing off some of the big new titles: the Beatles Rockband, Modern Warfare 2 and Final Fantasy XIII. None of those are exclusives for the Xbox but "All You Need is Love" will be an exclusive song download and two exclusive map packs for Modern Warfare 2. It's a recurring theme, Xbox gets extra stuff for every game. I'd like to begrudge them for that, but I really can't. They can ask for it, probably even demand it from publishers, based on their massive userbase and the popularity of Xbox Live.

Tony Hawk showed off a new peripheral stakeboard controller, which at the time seemed awesome. But after they showed of Natal at the end, it makes you wonder why you would need a peripheral in the first place. Probably more of a stop gap.

The new Splinter Cell game looked pretty cool and there was a game called Andrew Wake, which I had never heard of before, that looked really interesting - sort of a third person mystery adventure.

Then Microsoft started talking about all of the features beyond games. That was a good time to catch up on the Daily News Sports page. I peaked in a few times though. Yeah Netflix on your 360 is nice, ooh look they're adding Last.fm - don't care. Facebook on 360, not interested. Oh what a surprise, Twitter the scourge of human existance. Well they hit all of the major buzz words, so by corporate presentation standards that's a success. One thing they showed off that was pretty cool was a type of share feature, where you can watch a movie or show with friends (indicated by their avatars) who aren't there. Sort of like a remote watch option. It actually seemed pretty cool to me, mostly because my main contingent of friends are back on the East Coast and I had thoughts of getting us all together to watch the Mets vs. Yankees together and having my avatar jump up and down after David Wright took Sabbathia deep.

After that segment ended another suit got on stage and unleashed one hell of a surprise - Hideo Kojima, legendary producer of Metal Gear Solid. I believe it was a this point that myself and almost all other Playstation 3 owners looked derisevly at their PS3 and wondered "why?" or "what am I going to do with you?" Fortunately I got mine free, so it's an easier pill to swallow. Anyway, MS suit guy throws Kojima an alley-oop when he says "I can't wait to see what's next for Solid Snake." leading Kojima to quip "I didn't say anything about Solid Snake." Queue a teaser trailer showing that the new game, Metal Gear Rising is starring Raiden, back in his cyborg ninja suit from MGS4 and has a makeshift bandage over one eye.

Finally Microsoft went beyond all the speculation of a "motion sensing controller" to show off project Natal. Basically it's a camera that recognizes voice and faces, does full body capture and is used as a controller, without the controller. Interesting stuff, but none of the games they showed off were practical. Then they brought out Peter Molyneux who talked about what he and Lionhead Studios have done with it. They showed a demo of this artificial kid, Milo. In the demo one of the people at Lionhead holds a conversation with Milo, sees her reflection in a pond and swirls the water in it and even draws something on a piece of paper and passes it to Milo, who reacts and comments on it in real time. That was some crazy stuff. Like Kevin said, skynet type stuff.

Anyway, it was a very impressive press conference. I mean they had Speilberg, Paul McCartney and Ringo. Then again they also had Yoko. Still, it's going to be very had for Nintendo and Sony to keep pace. Fortunately, I just need to wake up at 9am tomorrow to find out what they've been up to.