Underwhelming Night For Microsoft

A singularly underwhelming press conference from Microsoft yesterday left core gamers feeling rather short changed.  After a strong start with a number of anticipated exclusives such as Gears of War 3 and Halo Reach, the show swiftly became what many feared and turned into an extended Kinect demo, with a number of motion control games on display but little else.

Perhaps the standout of the night was the Gears of War 3, 4 player co-op with the ability to play as a female soldier and the, albeit brief, appearance of Hideo Kojima showing off Metal Gear Rising.

Fable 3 also, predictably made an appearance, and though little new was revealed, it looked beautiful as expected.  Kinect however, was very much the limelight hog, with a number of games demoed to the seemingly unenthused crowd.  Kinectanimals had a suitably twee demonstration with a cute child playing with a Tiger.  While gamers everywhere held their breath and prayed for a mauling just to pep the show up, nothing was forthcoming, and MS went on to demo a number of other Kinect games, including, of course, a sports title and a fitness game.

Video chat and voice recognition for controlling Zune and other apps were shown off but the am-dram, over the top fakery of the conversations grated more than charmed, leaving any potential interest hanging on a thread of patience for many.

At the last minute, however, gamers were thrown something of a lifeline in the form of the Xbox 360 Slim.  The shiny console was unveiled as being larger capacity, smaller, slimmer, and perhaps more importantly…quieter.  Looking rather like someone had sat on it, the new, glossy Xbox certainly wouldn’t look out of place under a shiny HD TV,….or on the damaged parcel shelf of your local sorting office.  Arriving in the UK on July 16th, the Xbox360 Slim, while remaining unchanged in price, will no doubt entice many who would otherwise have saved their cash for an iPad or new iPhone.  Smart move by Xbox but sadly, one of too few for this E3.

Beaten hands down by the impressive EA conference, Microsoft may have had an impressive showing of the newly revealed Kinect, but for core gamers, it was nothing short of disappointing.

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