Microsoft E3 2009 Keynote Thread

When I first heard a discription of the tech, I wasn't very impressed, (haven't seen any videos yet, since I'm at work...) but if it can really be used for something like this, then consider me excited!

 

That's pretty fricken huge. You'd think that'd be a major tick off to retail if they allowed sales of brand new releases.

All along I assumed older ones, as they showed, stuff like Bioshock and Mass Effect thats probably <$30 anyway. Which is still a great start.

You figure most DD initiatives will start small that way to cater to retail. And maybe get more comprehensive later as fear on both sides wanes. I mean, XBLA in a way was the first DD shot at retail, even though it is games that wouldn't have been carried in retail anyway did it not exist, so retail couldn't complain. Then Xbox 1 games took it another step, but again it was hardly premium content. Now we have yet another step..

I hate to say it but this is a possible advantage for DVD, most all MS games will weigh in at ~7GB or less, making them a lot more download friendly.

 

Still, in hindsight my disappointment at no flagship fall 09 FPS grows. Being FPS is my favorite genre.

Sure, there's ODST, but I didn't figure that would the flagship, from the interviews I have read of team size and time scales, thats a smaller project. And being based on the Halo 3 engine we're not going to see great new graphics either.

We are really missing Rare's Perfect Dark 3 or something of that nature..

I mean you usually see about 3 big first party titles each fall from Sony/MS. So if I have the release dates, from MS this fall the three will be Splinter Cell (exclusive not 1st party), ODST, and Forza 3?

A bit disappointing.

Alan Wake looks among the best of the games shown, and it looks like there is a lot of FPS to it, that would have been really nice to round out the 09 lineup, but of course its 010.

 

I think Forza 3 is huge by itself, and if MS pushes it hard (Turn 10 was on the verge of abusing the word definitive in the keynote ) it would be a reason in itself to own a 360, just like the GTs were to the PS1 and 2.


ODST is going to be a full priced affair so they might be pushing quite some stuff into it.

 

I see that people make a big deal of this or act suprised, but I don’t understand why to be honest. Especially If you look at the past. I have a Xbox version of MGS laying around here, not to speak about MGS: Twin Snakes on the Gamecube.

That being said my Xbox 360 was for sale but now that I know that Crackdown 2 comes out, I will keep it

 

I wonder why MS completely abandoned "only 'soon to be released games'" approach.

 

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, and it's my only gripe with their conference. I think all the different stuff they showed was an awesome way to start off E3, but I really did like the "only-current-year-releases" approach they took previously. I think more than half of the conference was about 2010+ material.

 

I think their software line-up this year just wasn't strong enough to support the same approach they had last year. For me that was definitely the weakest part of the conference - but by giving a lot of attention to big third party titles, even if they aren't exclusives, they manage to hide this from view for many people I think, suggesting a very well-rounded conference. Not that there is anything wrong with that! Microsoft very clearly seems more comfortable providing a platform and a service. It's a strength in that third party software shines on the 360, but with things like the camera, I think you need something more. We'll see.

 

EDIT: First of all, thanks Arwin for your write up.

I think it was a great conference.

I still don't get the Natal thing - I think it's telling that the only thing that impressed me about it was the (supposed) speech recognition and conversation, but I've seen dozens of "breakthroughs" in that area which in all cases boiled down to text chat with an easily confused and incoherent A"I". Promising that alongside text to speech and even emotional recognition sounds far fetched (but despite previous experience I still hope it works!)

The video side of things didn't impress me, to be honest. Broad horizontal and vertical swipes to imitate LRUD and a push to imitate pressing X just doesn't scream Minority Report to me as it has to some people. Okay it may be more accurate than the D-pad but very gimmicky. There was nothing in the examples which made me wonder how it was done, which I guess is the barometer of whether I find something impressive or not.

That's Sixaxis, isn't it?! That's how I play F1CE and Pacific Rift, anyway.

One of the first things I did with my Wii in the baseball game was to hold the Wiimote behind my head waiting for the pitch and give it a wiggle. Despite clearly not being aimed anywhere near the sensor bar it handled this just fine. Try it.

If MG Rising was 360 exclusive Mattrick would have been doing cartwheels across the stage

 

I hated that "only this year" philosophy, it just cut down the amount of cool stuff shown, and arguably gave Sony a marketing ege.

Glad they agreed with me and ditched it.

 

Thanks for your write-up Arwin - top class.

I'm a little disappointed that the 2010 line-up got a bit too much focus, however given the size of the announcements made it really was the right place for it. I also think the 2009 year is probably going to be overshadowed by non-exclusives, whereas in previous years exclusives genuinely stole the limelight.

 

From my recollection there argument was always that MGS4 will come to the 360, ie be ported. Since Konami already made the investment and it would be just minor extra investment to earn millions more

With that said, I guess it could be implied that it also covers all MGS since MGS4 was supposed to be the last one.......

 

A couple of things I couldn't get my head around. Epic come out to demo what I thought was going to be Gears 3 or a Gears 2 add-on, and they end up showing Crash Commando? Then Halo: Reach swoops in and steals the Gears 3 release slot? So what happened to Gears 3?

The other thing was Alan Wake being labelled Spring 2010, which for a new IP with the hype surrounding it seemed a bit odd. GTA or MGS can launch Mar-May but a brand new IP seems, well, I don't know. Just odd. Especially as it looked really good.

 

Plenty of new ips have sold well with spring\summer releases, taking advantage of not having as many competitors as you would in autumn\winter.

 

I also wondered about this. It seems they are abandoning the interleaved Halo and GoW title releases, unless 2010 brings Halo Reach as well as GoW3. But that would seem overkill (and cannibalizing each other's sales).

 

That's cool, I wouldn't hurt MS to be able to match the experience

 

IN regard to Geow3 I wonder what Ms will do but relationship with Epic seems good.
2010 could be a relaunch for the 360 basically Halo in september and Geow in November could work, may be they think that they can overshadow whatever CoD activision is pushing out.
Rare case is interesting they announced nothing, I think they are working big time on wiiplay/wiisport clones to be released by fall 2010.

 

Perhaps Gears 3 has been tapped as a next-gen launch title? Or perhaps Sony have decided that they had enough of watching MS make Sony exclusives disappear and brokered a deal to remove the MS exclusivity?

 

Release Geow3 on the ps3 with out having the two first episodes on the system? GeoW2 is still not announced on PC.
I doesn't make sense to me.

 

Yeah, I wondered on that as well.

I actually would love Gears 3 and Halo Reach in the same season. But MS probably would look at it as cannibalizing sales.

Also Reach wasnt confirmed for Fall 010, just 010. But I cant see MS releasing a halo game outside of the holiday season though.

I actually know of a forum poster that had claimed since around a year ago inside info that MGS5 and Gears 3 would both be multiplatform for some time. Even though MGS:Rising could be technically not MGS5, he's now claiming credit for the first half of his supposed info coming true. I dont know, it just makes you wonder the tiniest bit about Gears 3

I guess Gears 3 could be an 011 game as well.

I dont like the direction MS is going with the Halo franchise. IGN's writeup was gushing over the MS conference, and one of the points they stated was that it was so strong not one but two new Halo games were announced and neither was arguably the talk of the show (motion cam stuff, Alan Wake, etc). While it may indeed have been a strong conference, I can help but think it's also a negative commentary on how MS is handling Halo, that it can be said that Halo games no longer dominate a show. In several ways. First, what really is the point of ODST at all, now that we know Reach is coming a year later? The mainline Halo games have always been 3 years apart. I see no need to dilute that with ODST at all. Originally I rationalized ODST best as a contractual obligation fulfillment from Bungie, IE, part of their spinoff contract was surely to make one last Halo game for MS. But if Bungie is making Reach also, that theory goes out the door. Now it looks to me like ODST is either a simple attempt by MS to grab some extra Halo related dollars, or perhaps even was an idea broached by Bungie itself who simply thought it was a good idea. Either way Halo ODST smacks of milking. It's going to simply dilute the brand and confuse consumers. Next, I havent been happy with Bungie's handling of the Halo franchise since part 1. So frankly I was happy when they parted with MS, and eager to see somebody else get the franchise and hopefully deal it some well needed graphical upgrades. Even though I know I'm in the tiny minority there. I was very excited to see what I assumed would be an all new, MGS studios graphical engine on Halo 4. So I'm not happy with the news Reach is from Bungie either, now I'm afraid we might be getting Halo 3 engine yet again with Reach. Next, I dont see why MS really debuted the Reach trailer at all. It just didn't seem to have a whole lot of point at this show. I mean as somebody else stated, it's funny Bungie could barely get MS to let them tease ODST at all as we recall, but now suddenly MS wants to throw two Halo games at E3 at the same time. Makes no sense. Finally, I dont like prequels. I dont like them in movies, I think theyre uncreative and a cliche and they simply make me less excited to play a game or watch a movie. Halo: 4 would be huge. Halo:Reach, well, that isn't as huge, plain and simple, which leads back to the diluting the brand in consumers minds problem. It also means we'll be going at least 6 years now between numbered Halo titles, etc.