It’s my first time being a part of anything like E3, and the first time I’ve sat amongst the ranks of journalists for a presentation like the MS press briefing we just left. While I certainly didn’t expect the crowd to whoop like fanboys, I did sorta feel bad for Don Mattrick, and the other speakers who were obviously pausing for applause, as directed by the teleprompter, only to be greeted with a 50 foot wall of silence. Other than applauding to welcome guests to the stage, the media was pretty frickin stingy with the love.
The juicy details… after the jump.
Here are a few of the things they did get nuts over. Other than Gears 2 and Final Fantasy 13, the only thing other thing they seemed to get excited over was the reverse compatibility of Rock Band 2.
Everyone here seems nice enough, but when it comes to press briefings it’s almost all business here at E3. I’ll be interested to see if this almost purposeful discontent carries over to Nintendo and Sony briefings as well. Is it MS hate or journalistic ethics? Or maybe they just didn’t care to be bathed in green light for an hour pror to the show.
Pasty people hate green light.
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9 responses so far ↓
1 Sean "Rothbart" Workman // Jul 14, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Personally, it’s the little things I liked the most about today. Shoving the dashboard into the dark little corner it deserves, a Netflix partnership, (via Major Nelson’s website) Copying games in their entirety to your hard drive for quicker/quieter play, gameshows with real prizes (and yes, I realize that realistically, I’ll never win anything worth winning in one of those games if I ever even get to play.)
While I will enjoy Gears 2, Galaga Legions and more Portal, I couldn’t give two poops about Fallout 3, Final Fantasy XIII, or Resident Evil 5.
I was also left scratching my head at You’re In The Movies and Lips (not so much in concept, but execution — how can it _really_ work with your own music? Where to the charts, lyrics, and what you’re watching come from?)
Overall I think my initially SUPER LOW expectations are what set this presentation up as a “win” in my book. I wasn’t expecting anything worthwhile and came away with several things.
2 Shane86 // Jul 14, 2008 at 4:55 pm
IT’S GUITAR HERO!!!!……………………………………………………..
3 mashedPenguin // Jul 14, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I came away from this media breifing pretty impressed. The new dashboard looks really slick. Gears, Fallout and Fable 2 look awesome.
Being able to download games to the HDD will be sweet. I have an Elite with around 85GB free at the moment. I can also see this being useful for multi disc titles. No need to swap if you load it to the HDD.
I think MS has pulled off a good showing here. It will be interesting to see what Sony and Nintendo will answer with.
4 A Rabid Moose // Jul 14, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I came away from the briefing…
…wait, I wasn’t at the briefing. Thanks for the update, guys.
5 HeavenlyYeti // Jul 14, 2008 at 5:35 pm
The biggest xbox announcement hasn’t dropped yet. Look in the lower right-hand corner of http://www.bungie.net.
That’s right. A countdown to 7:07:07 am, Wednesday.
6 Rory Hurren // Jul 14, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Did anyone notice how the guys on stage started most of the clapping as well.
7 Kiltman67 // Jul 14, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I can see why the media weren’t too enthusiastic, for the most part they’re all hardcore gamers and from how it appeared on the liveblogs, the majority of the presentation was taken up by casual gaming.
It’s one of the reasons that I personally felt it was an anti-climax; I’m not a fan of JRPGs, so I don’t care about FFXIII, though I can see why it’s a big deal; I’m completely burned out on Gears of War 2, because I can’t seem to be able to go onto any gaming website without hearing some mention of it or having to come face to face with CliffyB.
When you get past the fact that nothing new really came out about Fable 2 and the XBLA stuff was nice but hardly groundbreaking, the only thing I was interested in was Fallout 3 and that seemed like a pretty small part of the presentation.
Much more interested about the Nintendo and Sony presentations. Want to see if Nintendo are actually going to do enough for the hardcore gamers to suggest the Wii is going to remain viable into 2009 and want to see if Sony are actually going to try and blow us away or if they’ll just remind us that they have some good titles coming, go on and on about features we won’t see til 2010 and continue to neglect the PSP.
8 sleepyk // Jul 14, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I am watching the conference on G4 now (I hate the bloody channel now, but that’s another story all together). I heard the silence; awkward. Did anyone see the Gears demo just black out for no reason? Strange… and does anyone really care about Avatars?
But I do love the Netflix partnership. I am a proud Mac owner, but cannot watch movies instantly due to Apple’s stingy DRM . But now I get to watch my movies!
And WTF are Wii games doing on my 360, “Your in the Movies?”…geez. That’s going to be all over campus next year, oh yeah, I can’t contain my excitement :\
9 Saccia // Jul 15, 2008 at 10:24 am
Man… when the Guitar Hero guy got up there to announce Metallica and he was expecting a loud applause… it was painful to watch … PAINFUL!!!
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