E3 2008: Microsoft Debrief

Well, E3 is most definately upon us and you can be sure we’ll be here all the way through keeping you updated live as events are unfolding.

Without further ado, Heres the Microsoft Press Conference debrief!

10:32AM PDT: We are greeted by Don Mattrick, Senior VP of Entertainment who proceeds to convince us all that the 360 is the ultimate platform this year.

“Good morning everyone, it’s my privilege to welcome all of you to E3. Welcome to Xbox 360 — home to the biggest blockbusters… the biggest sellers on 360: GTA4, Halo 3, Assassin’s Creed… we proved without a doubt that 360 delivers the biggest and best hits for gamers.”

10:34AM PDT: A black and white movie showing the perfect 50’s suburban life plays:

Of course, Its VaultTec! Todd Howard from Bethesda takes to the stage. Just as he begins the demo, his controller disconnects “Im good..”. The PIPboy 300 device is finally shown, attached the players wrist and Todd demonstrates the weapons on offer. He then goes on to tell us the different play modes, stealth or aggressiveness. And surprise surprise, aggressive it is. The games targetting system is shown as Todd selects which body parts to attack and limbs go flying every which way.

“You can be a good person, a bad person and anyone in-between.”

Suddenly, A helicopter lands and launches what we are told is a mini nuclear warhead. It shows the weapon travelling in slow-mo all the way to the target. “Its a pretty effective weapon.”

Even from this short preview we can see the scale of this world is staggering and with the promised Marketplace content, We cant wait to finally get our hands on it.

10:42AM PDT: Jun Takeuchi, Producer of Resident Evil 5 takes the stage; sporting a dashing Umbrella Corp. jumper. And so a world first demo of RE5 begins. From what we can see the graphics look finely tuned and sharp, and the african sun sets a for a much different scene than past RE excursions; The online co-op mode gets officially confirmed and Sheva is introduced.

Sheva will serve as the second player and is an expert at spotting the obligatory exploding barrel. Finally, RE5 has been confirmed for a US and EU March 19 2009 release, better than ‘when its done’ I suppose.

10:49AM PDT: Peter Molyneux comondeers the stage. And the words we’ve all been waiting for: “Fable 2 is finished.” The demo starts, and the intro video fills the screen. Theres not much to say really, it looks pretty and.. fableish? A bird lands up on a tower and does a poo, only for it to fall and land on a child down below. This is your hero, welcome to Albion.

The online co-op has been further expanded upon with Molyneux saying: “Your hero, your world is unique to you… we’ve got a dynamic landscape that changes, you want to invite people in!” Little orbs represent your friends playing their single-player games — inviting them into the game is a matter of walking up to the orbs and pulling them into your game. Just like that, no lobbies.”

The world and characters in it are all unique to your game, so if your friend joins he sees the Albion that you helped shape. Complete with angry villagers and belching wives. Molyneux takes the other player to meet his wife and son, only to have the friend chat up his wife. And finally, Fable 2 has a confirmed October release. Get those pre-orders in!

10:55AM PDT: Another trailer, or the trailer. Another in the series of EPIC’s epic trailers as ‘Rendevous’ for Gears of War 2 is unleashed. It has to be seen to be believed. Sure enough here comes Cliff Bleszinski to show of the new co-op mode.

Dominating the landscape is a massive emergence hole, big enough to swallow a city and sure enough GoW2 is a graphical spectacle. More of the usual angry Mr Fenix action ensues with said Fenix using a flamethrower to cook up some locusts when a Brumak turns up. He gets angry and blows up a building. Marcus and Dom manage to escape the building only to run into another (the same?) Brumak and decide to escape through a series of doors and windows. “If they can ride them, so can we.” and boom, demo over!

We also recieved news of a new multiplayer mode; Horde. up to 5 players can take on wave after wave of increasingly difficult locust. Like centipede, but gore-i-fied. Count me in. And the final announcement, a confirmed November 7 release date.

11:04AM PDT: Don Mattrick is back to big-up the 360 with various motivational tidbits; “We knew one day our industry would be bigger than all other forms of entertainment. That day has arrived.”
“This is a breathtaking achievement, all of us are thriving. Especially those who love to play games… let’s take a look at this growth, and how Xbox 360 is fueling it.”
“When it comes to hardware, we’re in fantastic shape. According to NPD, we’re leading the market with the largest install base in the US, more than 5m ahead of PS3; in software, ahead as well, 2.7b in the last 12 months. In the last year 3rd party revenue outpaced the Wii and PS3 combined. I’m willing to declare here, today, that Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide than PS3 and Wii. We’ll offer an array of consoles with prices for everyone. …A year ago, 6m people were connected to Xbox live, and it’s doubled, a new member joining every 5 seconds.”

All very impressive. But theres more.

Mattrick proceeded to announce a new partnership for the 360, with NBC and Universal with MGM and Constantin Film in the EU.

11:11AM PDT: ohn Schappert, Head of Live Services and Software is next up with more on how 360 will change the entertainment world. And something very exciting happens. Cue Dashboard (with Lego Batman ready to go) and a system update downloads. The screen goes off and the system reboots and boom, a new dashboard.

Showing off some new slide based action and a sort of cartoony character, which we believe to be the new avatar system, and it all looks very ’swish’.

“When people turn on their Xbox 360s this fall, they’ll get an entirely new interface and dashboard, an entirely new Xbox through the magic of software.” “The new look and feel is more fun, more social, and simpler to use. You’ll have a Gamercard, but there’s also something new… it’ll be more personal with avatars. Express your personality and style, share it with your community and friends. … pants, shirts, hats… everything you need, it’s all here.”

A representatve from Rare takes the stage to explain the development process and what they hope to achieve with these new avatars, when the cool stuff starts. News on a new method of networking called a ‘Live Party’ where 8 people can ’stay connected’. Using the new Community channel you can send messages and pictures, maybe videos and voice to all other party members.

Theres also a new Primetime channel where through a partnership with Endemol you can star in TV game shows and apparantly win real prizes. Whether or not this makes to the EU is unclear. The party then seamlessy switches to a game of UNO which displays the new avatar functionality (Pre-set looped animations?). Afterwards the new Geometry Wars 2 is formally announced and looks like more of the same, but somewhat more polished.

And, A true sequel for Galaga. Created by the people who made the Pac Man CE game it looks, colorful. Im sure the epileptic population of 360 players will be less than impressed.

11:23AM PDT: An unmistakable voice comes in over the speakers, none other than now legendary GLADOS. And sure enough, more portal. Portal: Still Alive is to hit XBLA in a ‘2008 exclusive’ so it’ll probably be on other platforms soon enough. It brings with it new levels and achievements for those who need a bit more test chamber action in their lives.

Up next is a (very short) South Park trailer announcing a new arcade game. Despite never being very good these games sell like hotcakes so who are we to argue?

And finally more on the Community games; “We’ve already had more than 1m dwonloads of our free dev tools, and now we’re getting ready for our first wave of community generated games on Xbox Live. The early returns look great. We’ll launch community games in the fall as part of the new Xbox Live experience… as Don Mentioned, it’s more than games.”

11:24AM PDT: Another new partner! Netflix, promising XBL subscribers seamless access to the service offering ridiculous amounts of movies available on demand.

11:27AM PDT: Time for some more trailers. This time we have Banjo and Kazooie in what is apparantly ‘their greatest adventure yet’. It seems to consist of building massive tanks to destroy dominoes.

Next is Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise which does seem to have some genuinely interesting functions. The ability to scan cards with the Vision Cam and then directly import pinata people into the world using them looks quite smart.

And the classic Banjo game will be releasing on arcade this holiday.

11:29AM PDT: Time for some games that are all about f.u.n. Designed for the casual crowd, the new Scene It game and another interesting one, You’re in the Movies.

Scene It is more of the same, except this time with avatars and DLC.

You’re in the Movies however, is quite different. Players have to perform actions in front of the Vision Cam and the game edits you into ‘hilarious’ CG cutscenes. Cue MS execs looking stupid. To be fair I did get a few lol’s out of the final product, which featured a giantised lizard wreaking havoc and MS execs looking stupid in the background. I imagine the novelty value wears off pretty soon.

Available holiday season it will include a camera with the game, although I hope you’ll be able to buy it solus.

“On average 3.5m songs are downloaded from Xbox Live every month. Xbox Live counts for 80% of all songs downloaded across all platforms. 80%!”

That really does surprise me, given some of the ‘artists’ offered.

11:39AM PDT: Kai Huang, President of Red Octane takes the stage.

Lots of stuff we already knew (touch slide guitar, music maker etc), REM are to release a track pack available on GH3 in September and World Tour when it releases. Also a ‘partnership’ with Metallica bringing the whole Death Magnetic album as DLC for WT. Sounds good.

11:43AM PDT: Time for the big reveal of Lips, the new karaoke thing for the 360. Showing off motion sensing microphones with a built in glow for glowing purposes it looks ok. Like a karaoke game.

The genuinely interesting thing is the apparant ease with which you can plug in you Zune or iPod and wail along to your favourite tunes. Duffy takes to the stage to sing her song, ‘Mercy’. Besides from the fact shes not using the Lips mic Im not sure why shes here but oh well.

11:50AM PDT: Rock Band 2 time!

“Last holiday, we had another great experience: Rock Band. We’re thrilled that Rock Band 2 will premiere exclusively on Xbox 360.” “It’s a real pleasure to be here to talk about Rock Band 2, which is debuting in September. The single most important aspect to the game: the music. The soundtrack includes 84 songs, every single one a master recording. It’s the most compelling of all our games.”

1 less song than Guitar Hero, but being as their setlist is yet to be revealed Ill with-hold judgement. (You can see the full RB2 setlist HERE).

11:54AM PDT: Final guest; Yoichi Wada, President of Square Enix.

Infinite Undiscovery gets a confirmed September 2 US and September 5 EU release date. The new Star Ocean game is due in Spring 09 and The Last Remnant which sees 360s first is due holiday season. Cue trailer. It looks pretty enough but it is after all, another JRPG.

12:00AM PDT: Time for a summary, Don Mattrick returns to the stage only to interrupted by Mr Wada. A very long trailer is on featuring flying things, big guns, big city, big guns, big robots. Then boom. Final Fantasy XII. (Excuse me while I dry-hump the air.) Don’s final words sum it up perfectly.

“Wow, that’s incredible. FF13 is an astonishing addition to our growing away of RPG titles… it joins a long list of former PlayStation franchises finding a new home on Xbox 360. Enjoy the rest of E3!”