Good Morning!
It’s a nice and early 7:25am here in Blackpool.
The sun is just above the building across the street.
What better time to start writing something!
It’s been so long since typing things for this blog, but I have missed it all.
I thought the best way to start is a recap of a few things that happened at E3.
Loads of exciting news with interesting stuff & loads of “Eh…You what?!” kinda stuff.
Sony and Microsoft both had a good line up on their show, whilst Nintendo didn’t really appeal to have any shocking announcements at all.
So anyway…
I’m going to post some things about what happened and try and spot the most interesting things that appealed to me.
First up – Microsoft.
Microsoft had a head start at the show with the first conference and a whole 24 hours before any of the others. I needed that time to digest everything that was shown!
They had many different things to show, from Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr to talk about the Beatles: Rock band, Tony Hawk to talk about RIDE, and Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid fame to announce Metal Gear Solid: Rising.
Even Steven Spielberg had something to say!
They also got first dibs on Showing live game-play footage of Modern Warfare 2 which looked fantastic!
Cliff Blezinski from Epic Games also made a showing, but it was of some disappointment, he came on to make a kind of underwhelming announcement called for an arcade game called ‘Shadow Complex’, I’m sure the game might be great and all, but when ‘CliffyB’ comes on stage you expect him to run onto the stage wielding two Chainsaw Lancers and announcing Gears of War 3 kind of colossus announcement.
Project Natal
The one announcement that everyone came away talking about was Project Natal and Peter Molyneux’s Dimitri Project re-named ‘Milo’.
Project Natal is a new peripheral that’s all about not needing a controller. It understands your voice and motion, and you can use it to do anything from navigating menus, telling it to turn on/off and then also playing games. It can also understand who turned the console and will automatically sign that persons profile by the tone of their voice which seemed quite cool too.
Don’t get me wrong, its great technology and stuff, but like a friend said “You play games to have fun and chill out on a couch, not diving around a room getting tired.” Which is true! why would you want to dive around a room when you come in from work. Although the same person once said “I don’t wanna play CoD, there’s too much running around.”
They showed a Live Presentation of what Natal can do, they showed a few good examples like Painting and a sort of Tennis meets Breakout type thing too. They also showed that an avatar can now try and show you the sole of its shoe with brilliant effects!
After the Live demo they showed a kind of Concept video of other actions you can use for Natal. The video also showed many examples, like doing Karate moves in fighters, driving with your hands in a shape of a steering wheel etc…
they also used an example of playing a game like ‘Scene it!’ or ‘1vs100’ where you clap your hands like a buzzer if you know the answer. Why not just press the button on the controller and save £150 or what ever Natal will cost. It seems like its going to be expensive anyway…
It also showed that you can Scan a Skateboard and then skate around, which I thought kind of made the whole Tony Hawk: RIDE talking 20minutes earlier kind of pointless.
“Hey Here’s a Skateboard controller”
Then saying “With Natal You don’t need a controller, their Useless!”
Then Peter Molyneux came on the stage and reviled his long awaited Dimitri Project, ‘Milo’. It’s basically a Human Tamagochi, or that’s all I got from it. It showed a video demonstration that was all about that Milo is a living breathing person and can understand human emotion, saying things like “You seem worried, whats up?” and he would understand the whole conversation you would have. He would also make you believe he was real by you writing something on a piece of paper, then handing it him through the screen, and he would take it from you (although you’ve still got it in your hand, now if he did take it from you that would be awesome!).
I wonder what the achievements will be like?
“Achievement Unlocked: Got tricked into thinking the ball was really going to come out of the screen!”
The video was apparently taken a couple of weeks before E3 and was real. I’ve yet to get my head around how real it was, but some people within deep inside the industry got to try it out and say it pretty much works.
Other Announcements
Also announced was a Partnership with Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm which are all coming to Xbox LIVE this fall, hopefully sooner rather than later!
It’s a great Idea to have access to all this stuff from your Tv, but the one thing I hope it doesn’t do is have a pop-up from every Tweet/Status update whilst playing games, otherwise its going to be one big pop-up every 5 seconds.
There was also a lot more announced and shown at the conference, things like Halo: Reach, Halo:ODST, Crackdown 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Forza 3, Alan Wake, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Final Fantasy XIII and JoyRide (Avatar Kart Racer).
Also a few enhancements to the Xbox360 Dashboard were shown, like the Video Marketplace will change to ‘Zune: Marketplace’ and will enable 1080p streaming, Xbox 360 games will also be able to be downloaded via a new section called ‘Games on Demand’ which is launching in August.
They showed Avatar Clothes Marketplace where you’ll be able to purchase new outfits and add-ons like say night vision goggles or a remote control warthog.
Blips?!
Live Presentations are great! But there always full of hiccup’s. Microsoft’s was no exception.
Shadow Complex had a bug where they came to the boss fight and was stuck on top, the boss disappeared which then caused the end of the demo and swiftly moved on to the next announcement.
Natal was one of the biggest blips to come out of E3, it became the joke of E3 and was used all around the show floor.
People always complain when things like this happen, but none of the games shown are out and fully developed. Natal won’t be out until at least Fall 2010 and is miles away from the finished product.
Best part and let downs?
So that’s Microsoft’s day in the bag. Overall a fantastic lineup and great enhancements to Xbox LIVE.
Although no mention of Games For Windows, but with what was shown some great titles to see over the next year or so.
Left 4 Dead 2 was one of the biggest surprises for me, I didn’t at all see it coming. I think its a great thing. I don’t agree with all the boycotts, but then again it is quite soon to have a sequel, but I think it’ll work well. All the additions are great and it’s more left 4 Dead! Awesome!
Crackdown 2 was a great announcement!
Splinter Cell: Conviction looked awesome too!
Alan Wake was probably one of the biggest let downs, after waiting years to finally see it, it doesn’t look over exciting, but I’ll wait to get my hands on it to see overall.
So that was Microsoft’s Media Briefing event. Loads of awesome games, new features and some cool new technologies.
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