So, I watched the press conference earlier today. I was not expecting too much from Microsoft this time around since they are not launching a new platform, just building on one. It was a nice surprise that I was pretty wrong. Microsoft made some pretty large announcements that are exciting.
Gears of war looks stunning. It looks like it has improved a ton since last E3. CliffyB played a level there in front of everyone. The gameplay itself looks completely solid and a ton of fun. I cannot wait to get my hands on this one.
There were a lot of other great looking games there as well: Lost Planet, Too Human, Viva Pinata, Prey, 99 Nights, Splinter Cell, Blue Dragon, Forza Motorsport 2, Fable 2, ect. The list goes on for quite a while. The Grand Theft Auto IV announcement was awesome and a slap in the face to Playstation 3 zealots.
The HD-DVD add-on drive looked pretty slick. They did not go into much detail though. If HD-DVD takes of, I will be getting one of those for sure. The camera looked cool as well, but it is not something I expect to pick up.
Some of the PC games looked great as well. Crysis is absolutely beautiful. Let’s hope the gameplay is up there with the visuals. I am a bit worried after playing Far Cry, which looked amazing when it came out but has some gameplay issues.
The live anywhere stuff was real exciting. Xbox Live functionality across 360, PC, and Windows mobile phones. They showed off so many cool things: Getting points for playing games on your PC and your phone, getting game invites on the PC from a friend playing on 360, playing Xbox 360 players in the same game with PC players, buying one copy of a simple arcade game like Zuma and being able to play it on all three platforms, and tweaking out my Forza car on my phone and PC and then racing it on the 360. Awesome, I can’t wait for that stuff.
Overall, Microsoft did a pretty impressive job this year.