Microsoft E3 2009 Summary

Today, actually about 6 hours ago, Microsoft’s E3 press conference was streamed live in various webpages. It lasted around an hour and a half, and you could probably catch a YouTube video later on or perhaps somewhere else with the entire conference recorded, but you guys probably have better things to do than to watch all of it. Plenty of it is just boring or stuff we already knew.

Unfortunately I don’t have the time or money or even the desire to go to the E3, so I was just sitting here watching the conference. The things I do for you guys. 🙂 And here is a quick summary of all the stuff I thought was worthwhile to note, and a bit of what I think of some of the more major points. Note, I’m posting in order of what I thought would have interested me and viewers, but some of them were really hard to place, so don’t flame me because I didn’t put Final Fantasy XIII at the top.

Project Natal – Development Kits Arriving Today – Hardware, Exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED
– Easily the most shocking announcement for the press conference, Project Natal is the rumored Xbox Fluid. Basically it is a camera (+ microphone) that is able to record your movements. It isn’t an Eyetoy, it seems that it is capable of capturing 3D movements, facial recognition, full voice recognition, etc.
– Advertised as a no controller method of sensing your movements, the videos showed everything from fighting to skateboarding. Obviously you can talk to people with the camera as a chat service, but it also was used in menus (sliding with your arms or telling it to turn on), and gaming.
– Cool stuff was the ability to scan your own skateboard into the game and let it customize the in-game board to match the one you have in real life.
– Works on all old XBOX and all future XBOX (does this include the original XBOX and the next generation?)
– As cool as it is, I’m worried about the fact that it is release now. There’s no way this will come bundled into all future games and unlikely with consoles without raising the price significantly. The development kits are just arriving at places now, so there are no games at the moment, and isn’t this coming in a little late in the XBOX 360’s life? Only time will tell I guess.

Metal Gear Solid Rising – To Be Announced – Exclusive (hinted, but not confirmed), NEWLY ANNOUNCED
– Practically no information whatsoever asides from a trailer. No Solid Snake, just Raiden now.

Forza Motorsport 3 – October 2009 – Exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED
– They want to push, reinvent, redefine the racing genre with this game. They all look the same to me though. The graphics are a step up from all the other games with the really realistic cars. The driver view shows a rear view mirror and side mirrors show exactly what happens to the sides and behind the driver as they are pretty detailed. There was a focus on community, the customizing of cars and sharing these customizations online. Of course, the game also sports over 400 cars, so that’ll be nice to see.

Alan Wake – Spring 2010 – Exclusive, already announced
– Seems like a pretty interesting horror (?) first person shooter. The video basically showed a guy (presumably Alan Wake?) with a shotgun against an invisible enemy and a ton of random objects flying all over the place. Flashlight points to horror genre, gun points to first person shooter. Seems to be a lot of hype over this game, not sure what the big deal is.

Halo: Reach – 2010 – Exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED
– Yep, Halo, another one. Not much is known, just another FPS coming in 2010. Who cares about details, as long as it says Halo, it’ll sell like hotcakes.

Halo 3: ODST – September 22nd, 2009 – Exclusive, already announced
– Another Halo game, I guess XBOX 360 owners will be all over this. Personally I stopped after the second one. The graphics in the video looked great, perhaps the storyline will be great too, but I’m not particular interested. Like all Halo games, the video showed some ships, some shooting, some grenades, you know, the whole Halo experience. Apparently people who buy this game get an open beta invite to Halo: Reach.

Shadow Complex – Summer 2009 – XBOX Live Arcade, exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED
– I’m not exactly sure how the XBOX Live Arcade works, but I’m under the impression that these are relatively cheap games available for download at low prices. I’m intrigued by Shadow Complex, it is sort of a 2D side scrolling platformer, similar to the classic Metroid games. So you sidescroll through rooms and shoot people, but it seems the twist in Shadow Complex is obviously the 3D look (pretty sweet if you ask me), and the fact that a lot of the environment seems to be interactive. In the demo, they shot a wire that killed the guys and stated that obviously they could have just shot them instead. It looks rather promising, and since it is a downloadable game with a 10 hour gameplay value, I’d be very tempted to pick it up if I had an XBOX360.

Left 4 Dead 2 – November 17th, 2009 – Exclusive (PC release as well), NEWLY ANNOUNCED
– Plenty of rumors on this one. The original Left 4 Dead features a city full of zombies and 4 survivors that blast through them hoping to make it out alive. Needless to say the first game was a huge success. Personally I had a phase where I went weeks just playing that one game. This was again, only a trailer, nice chainsaw and gun action, probably a bit gruesome for kids. I may or may not pick this up.

Splinter Cell Conviction – Winter 2009 – Exclusive (PC release as well), already announced
– We’ve heard about this one already. Splinter Cell is a game that focuses on stealth. Apparently the main character (Sam Fisher)’s daughter died, so he’s pissed, and apparently that makes the game more gruesome and pitiless. I guess I’ll need more than a guy with a French accent to immerse myself in the story, but the gameplay looks alright. A new feature called Mark and Execute was shown, seems like you mark a guy and you kill him the moment you enter the room or area. Interesting concept, and the game looks as good as any other Splinter Cell.

Cracktown 2 – Unknown – Exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED
– Only a trailer, but I’m pretty pumped for it. I haven’t played the first one, but the trailer shows a guy who chases a criminal into a corner, and just as he takes him out, something happens to him. The trailer is pretty good, apparently Cracktown was a great game, but again I haven’t played it, so I can’t comment beyond the trailer and how it looks fun.

Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare 2 – November 2009 – Not Exclusive, already announced
– Anyone who hasn’t played the first Modern Warfare should pick it up now and then slap themselves for not having played it earlier. True it is yet another FPS, but it perfected practically every aspect of the FPS and was loved by everyone who played it. Call of Duty 5 came out afterwards, didn’t really impress me, it wasn’t as good as Modern Warfare in my opinion, so I was overjoyed when the first trailers of Modern Warfare 2 came out. They were rather pointless, not much in game footage, in fact no actual gameplay footage, but today’s E3 conference had a good few minutes of actual in-game footage. For the most part it seems rather similar in the engine and gameplay, they chose a level that depicted a snowstorm, and the snow and everything looked amazing. The guns were slightly frosted over, there was the sound of the wind and such. What really impressed me was the snowmobiles, you seem to drive them while shooting, I guess that isn’t really all that different from Modern Warfare, but why fix what isn’t broken?

Tony Hawk Ride – October 2009 – Not Exclusive, already announced
– Still no word on the price of the Skateboard controller, but the demo of it looks pretty nice. It might really reinvent the awesome but almost stale formula of Tony Hawk games. It apparently moves slightly, it has an accelerometer and it can detect when you foot is by the sides or when you grab the board, etc. If the board doesn’t cost too much, I might genuinely be interested since years ago Tony Hawk was easily one of the most addictive games I’ve played.

Final Fantasy XIII – Spring 2010 – Not Exclusive, already announced
– This was a major disappointment in my opinion. What were they thinking, bringing absolutely nothing new to the table, and still claiming it was. So we get the ingame footage that we’ve already seen a dozen times, in fact and abridged version of it, and the guy on stage had the audacity to call it premier footage just because it was the first time they used the XBOX360 instead of the PS3 to run the game. I don’t have anything against Final Fantasy XIII, in fact I’m rather excited for it, but I felt ripped off by the footage shown in the conference.

The Beattles Rock Band – September 9th, 2009 – Not Exclusive, already announced
– Didn’t interest me all that much, not a fan of rhythm games, and it looked just like any other Rock Band game to me. But I guess the rhythm game genre has been extremely popular lately. There doesn’t seem to be any huge innovation, but there wasn’t all that much said, the focus to me seemed to be the fact that it was the Beattles more than anything else.

Joyride – Summer 2009 – XBOX Live Arcade, exclusive, NEWLY ANNOUNCED, FREE
– Not sure what this is. Seems to be a free racer? Or perhaps you could just cruise around in a car in the world. In any case, they didn’t sink much time at all into this game, all we know is that it is free, and there is “extreme air”. Not really amazed by it, but it’s free, so who cares?

XBOX Live – All over the place – Bunch of features, exclusive, some free, some not
– Music, some partnership means free music for XBOX Live users
– TV, something about SkyTV or something, I actually went to grab something to eat because I don’t think anyone cares
– Sync videos with Zune, 1080p, no need for any new downloads, video service is apparently a lot better
– Facebook, Twitter, list of friends, post screenshots, interesting, but not important

Source: