Microsoft E3 2010 Press Conference Highlights

x360The Microsoft E3 2010 press extravaganza has come and gone. Naturally, we’ve got lots of great news, videos and demos to talk about.

Here are the highlights, after the jump!

  • MS kicked off the presser with Call of Duty: Black Ops. Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia showed off some gameplay, including a cool chopper gunner seat level. No 360 exclusives announced though, so it’s weird that this was the way they started the whole shindig.
  • Kojima-san arrived to show off Metal Gear Rising. Looks like all of those “cut” scenes on the Konami teaser site really were spot-on. Raiden pretty much cuts anything he wants up with a blade, and despite my misgivings, the Rising footage was actually kind of cool.
  • Cliffy B. came onstage for a demonstration of 4 player story co-op for Gears of War 3. It’s about time, and it really looks just as fun as the previous co-op gameplay did. Environments look wide open, too. Lambent Berserker? Win.
  • Lionhead Studios made their customary hype train appearance with a brief showing of a Fable III trailer. To be honest, the ship-to-ship sea warfare was the most exciting part of the whole thing. The game comes out on October 26th.
  • A very brief trailer for a new Crytek title codenamed Kingdoms. Big swords and such. Kind of nonsensical. Guess we’ll have to wait for more information?
  • Halo: Reach made its campaign debut and boy does it look like the Halo game I’ve been waiting for. A slightly darker style, with multiple Spartans all working together. Huge environments, tons of enemies on screen and night-time action. Plus, fans of the books will be glad to see that this game features freaking space combat! Seriously can’t wait for this game to arrive in September. Very impressive gameplay reveal by Bungie.
  • Apparently X-Box Live has reached 25 million members. I’d like to know the ratio of Silver to Gold, though.
  • Looks like XBox Kinect is finally going to bring that long sought after Minority Report type of browsing to consoles. Microsoft showed off some gesture controls for the dashboard as well as voice recognition. This is actually cooler than the games I’ve heard about, but we’ll see if it’ll be worth the money. The Kinect demo overall wasn’t too shabby though, especially with the concept behind the Video Kinect video chat reveal, even if the acting was pretty corny.
  • It seems that ESPN is teaming up with XBox 360. Looks like we’ll get some cool sports related stuff on XBL at no additional cost, including On Demand sports games and such. Would like to see how this actually works in practice.
  • Not sure why we need even more Kinect information after last night’s presser, but Microsoft was keen on showing off several of Kinect’s games including Kinectimals (Nintendogs clone), and Kinect Sports (Wii Sports clone). I mean, I get that Nintendo has had great success with this, but couldn’t you have at least come up with more than Kinect Sports? Apparently, there will also be a cart racing game as well as Kinect Adventures. Why not just Kinectventures if that’s going to be your naming convention? Also, a dance game called Dance Central, made by Harmonix. So far this has taken up half of today’s event…
  • Alright, finally the news-worthy portion. Kinect will arrive on November 4th will over 15 launch titles, including a brand new Sonic game.
  • Forza Kinect controls shown off. This actually looks kind of cool: hands at ten and two to drive, turn of the head to see rearview mirrors and such. Probably the more impressive demo of Kinect. Not sure where the gas and brake controls come in, though.
  • Xbox 360 Slim is revealed! OK, in motion this thing is much slicker than the images leaked last night. It’s a good bit smaller than the regular 360, but I’m still not crazy about the angular design. The coolest part, though? Everyone in the audience was given one for free. Why the hell am I not at this, again?

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Well, that’s a wrap on the E3 2010 press conference. There was plenty of fun stuff to behold, along with plenty of not fun stuff to behold, but I guess it all depends on taste. Much of the latter half of the show was dominated by Kinect, which I suppose makes sense if you’re Microsoft and want people to know all about your new thing. It was also interesting to note that there was no Hulu announcement.

Something tells me Sony’s conference tomorrow might be fairly similar, with all of the Move stuff, but I have a feeling Sony is going to have a few more exclusive surprises than we got at this one. It was mostly sequels, which was sad, because new IPs is why I wanted my 360 to begin with. I’m fairly positive every game talked about in the first half was a game we already knew about last year, save for Black Ops.

Anywho, stay tuned to this post, because I’ll be updating it with links as the videos become available individually. What do you guys think of what was announced and shown? Go!

Edit: Also, if you missed it, Nick was live-tweeting all of the press conference goodness today from the GamerSushi Twitter account, and the results are seriously entertaining. You should hit that up today and tomorrow when he does it for Nintendo and Sony.

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I write about samurai girls and space marines. Writer for Smooth Few Films. Rooster Teeth Freelancer. Author of Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Fan Guide, out NOW!

8 thoughts on “Microsoft E3 2010 Press Conference Highlights”

  1. I’m going to sound like a huge downer, but I was highly disappointed in this conference. About 85% of the show was Kinect, which I don’t care much for (even though a few of the games sound fun), while the actual games showcased were stuff everybody knew would be there. The problem being that so few games were showcased that weren’t Kinect. Where’s those E3-style game montages that they had the last two years?

    Also, I will refuse to give a damn about what Crytek is doing until they tell us what they did with TimeSplitters 4.

    1. No dude, you don’t sound like a downer at all. I was ready for MS to announce lots more exclusives. The last few years they’ve at least made an attempt to appeal to some RPG gamers out there and such, this year it was just 3-4 shooters plus more Fable, which isn’t exactly a great quality franchise. It’s not bad, either, it’s just middle of the road in terms of RPG games.

      I think we literally got 5 games plus Kinect, as you pointed out.

  2. Meh, the only real news is the 360 re-design. Although there’s still two things stopping me from ever buying one; failure rate and the huge power brick. We shall see if the re-design addresses either…

    Oh and giving a free 360 to everyone was so cheap ass you said on twitter.

  3. Yeah, overall that was a pretty lame presser. I mean, Reach looked freaking AMAZING and Gears was pretty cool, but watching that Kinect stuff was so confusing.

    Like, that dude from Harmonix dancing…and Kinect Sports? When are we going to see Nintendo’s cease and desist?

  4. I think it was a great conference, I’m excited about Kinect (the interface parts, who cares about the games), GEARS, HALO, and the new Xbox looks way better than those pictures, I’ve already called my boss and told him to hold me one when we get them in this week. Also apparently we (Gamestop) are not taking pre orders on them (yet) so so far it looks like first come first serve. Thank God I don’t have to wait in line lol.

  5. MAN! My first E3 as a 360 owner and they took a dump on the floor!

    The games they showed are cool, but WE KNOW ABOUT THEM ALREADY.

    They set a bar so low that Sony should be able to blow them away and now, Nintendo has a chance at doing so as well.

    Disappointed.

  6. Sony really can’t fail to beat their press conference in terms of content this year right? If they don’t metion Home they’ll be fine.

  7. Are they so secure in the inevitable success of Halo: Reach that they figured they don’t need to waste time developing anything else?

    I was surprised that they led the presser with Black Ops. I would think that you’d want to pimp your exclusive games up front rather than advertising a game that your competitor has as well. Yeah, I know about the exclusive window on the map packs, but I don’t think that’s going to send any ps3 owners scurrying out to buy the new 360.

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