June 2, 2009 -By Jason Cross
Microsoft at E3: What Didn’t They Announce?
There were audible cheers when Microsoft VP John Shappert announced that the company’s E3 press conference would contain no sales data, attach rates, or other business stuff. It was to be a nonstop show-and-tell of new games and one special accessory. What followed was a pretty impressive two hours of first looks, premieres, and special guests.
The conference started with the special Beatles edition of Rock Band. We saw the intro and some gameplay, which was notable for its support for multiple vocal parts. The Beatles Rock Band will ship this fall on multiple platforms with 45 games, and downloadable content is coming (including full albums, starting with “Abby Road”). The hit song “All You Need Is Love” will be available only on Xbox Live, with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Boarders.
The real surprise was when Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr came on stage to quickly thank people for their interest in the game and to encourage everyone to play it. They didn’t have much to say, but the crowd was impressed by the star power nonetheless.
Next up was Tony Hawk, queuing up a video to demonstrate the new Tony Hawk Ride with its custom skateboard controller. It’s an impressive bit of tech, but not particularly exclusive to the Xbox platform.
Neither is Modern Warfare 2, the next game to get a live gameplay demo. Every bit as over-the-top intense as Modern Warfare, the sequel looks great. There will be two maps for the multiplayer portion of the game that will be released on Xbox Live before anywhere else.
The producer and director of Final Fantasy XIII were next on stage, along with a translator, to give the audience the first look of the game actually running on Xbox 360 hardware (as opposed to the PS3). It looks pretty much the same as it does on the PS3. No new major announcements for the game, except that Square Enix is “targeting a Spring 2010 release.”
From this point on, the audience was told, everything we saw would be available exclusively on Xbox 360. A small point, but perhaps an important one.
Shadow Complex, Joy Ride, Splinter Cell, and Motorsport 3
Donald Mustard and Cliff Bleszinski from Epic Games came on stage to demonstrate the company’s first Xbox Live Arcade game: Shadow Complex. The side-scrolling action game evokes a very Metroid-like quality, with a huge sprawling complex and power-ups that make the capabilities of your hero grow to reach new areas. We were promised the game would release this Summer with a campaign over 10 hours long.
There wasn’t much cheering for the next XBLA game, Joy Ride, which is sort of a kart racing game for your Xbox Live avatars. The trailer made it look “okay” if not original, but the interesting part is that it will be Microsoft’s foray into microtransaction-based gaming. Joy Ride will be free to download and free to play, but Microsoft will sell additional cars and racetracks.
Back to the big AAA games with a pair of hotly anticipated sequels. A CG trailer for Crackdown 2 was exciting if only because Microsoft is working on Crackdown 2, a fan favorite. It looks like the style is similar but slightly different, though the trailer didn’t give a lot away about the gameplay. Left 4 Dead 2 is the other hot sequel, coming only to PC and Xbox 360 on Nov. 17. It takes place in what looks like New Orleans, with a different quartet of heroes against the hordes of zombies. Neither of these games were demonstrated live.
It’s been some time since we last saw Xbox exclusive Splinter Cell: Conviction, which was demoed next in both video and live gameplay. It has changed dramatically, with a totally different style and plot. The game seamlessly translates between gameplay and storytelling in a rather unique way, and projects important information directly into the game world. Each level is a sandbox environment that lets players direct Sam to take their own path to an objective.
Clearly, Microsoft wants to, as John Shappert said, “win the racing game” with Forza Motorsport 3. We saw several demo videos of actual gameplay, and it looks gorgeous with an all-new 60fps graphics engine. The quick demo showed off lots of features, like a new in-cockpit view, extensive car damage, and finally, the ability to roll a car over if you wreck badly enough.
Producer Dan Greenawalt promised over 400 cars from 50 manufacturers, and swore that it would be by far the biggest racing simulation game on any platform. Of course, you’ll still be able to customize your cars, paint livery on it (as in Forza Motorsport 2), and even record, edit, and share hi-def videos with your Xbox Live friends. Greenawalt said Forza Motorsport 3 will crush the competition with “the best graphics and physics, the biggest roster of cars, and the biggest community features” when it is released this October. This was more than a shot over the bow at Sony’s much-vaunted and excellent Gran Turismo series, whose 5th game in the series is a big feather in Sony’s cap.
Halo, Alan Wake, and Xbox Live
It wouldn’t be an Xbox press conference without some Halo, and Bungie was on hand with the first live gameplay from Halo 3: ODST, in which you play from the perspective of several Orbital Drop Shock Troopers in the course of a story that takes place just before the events of Halo 3. Halo 3: ODST is coming on Sept 22nd and will feature a new co-op game mode called “firefight.” Bungie doubled up with a brief teaser trailer for Halo: Reach, a game presumably about the fall of the planet Reach, taking place before the events of the first Halo game. No gameplay was shown, but we were told to expect the game next year.
Another game we haven’t seen or heard about in awhile, Alan Wake, was the next to be demonstrated with live gameplay. The psychological thriller looks better than ever and may finally see the light of day, but not this year—Remedy is targeting a Spring 2010 release.
Taking break from games for awhile, Microsoft turned to the Xbox Live service. Music is coming to Xbox Live this fall, but not from the Zune service as you’d expect. Instead, MS has partnered with Last.fm to bring free streaming music to all Xbox Live Gold members later this year.
Netflix on Xbox Live is getting an upgrade, giving users the ability to browse the catalog right from their Xbox 360 consoles, add movies to their queue, or just start playing them immediately. This is a big improvement over the current setup, where you have to add items to your streaming queue from your PC before going to your Xbox 360 to watch in your living room. For those in the UK and Ireland, the Sky service is coming to Microsoft’s box, including live streaming TV.
The Xbox video marketplace will re-launch this year as the Zune video service on Xbox 360, while expanding its reach from 8 countries to 18. It’s not just a name change, though. Hi-def video will get an upgrade to 1080p resolution with 5.1 audio, and you won’t have to download a lot of the video before you start watching. You can click “watch” and begin the movie or TV show almost immediately, with the bitrate adapting to your connection. The promised, and then cut, feature to allow gamers to watch Netflix or Video Marketplace videos together with their friends over Xbox Live is coming back, too.
Facebook, Twitter, Metal Gear, and Project Natal
Microsoft is getting its social networking on this Fall, too. Internet darling Felicia Day came on stage to demonstrate the new Facebook and Twitter integration. Facebook will have an Xbox 360 application that lets you browse your friends, update your status, post to profiles, view pictures, and more with an interface that is very similar to the main Xbox 360 dashboard. In supporting games, you’ll be able to take screenshots of your proudest (or most shameful) moments and post them directly to your Facebook profile.
Tiger Woods will be the first with this feature, but no other games were mentioned. With the Twitter app, your twitter feed is updated in real time, and you can post tweets directly from your console. I guess it’s time to break out those Xbox 360 Messenger Kits (the small thumb-keyboard that snaps onto your 360 controller).
Before moving to its last big announcement, Microsoft welcomed Hideo Kojima on stage to announce the arrival of the Metal Gear Solid franchise to Microsoft’s box. The game is called Metal Gear Solid Rising, and features the character Raiden. We didn’t see any gameplay, but we’re promised it’s a totally new Metal Gear experience, and the usual “Tactial Espionage Action” tagline in the logo was replaced by “Lightning Bolt Action.” It was never mentioned that the game was exclusive to Xbox 360, but an hour earlier, John Shappert said that “everything you see beyond this point is exclusive to Xbox 360.” So is MGS Rising exclusive to Microsoft’s console or not?
Finally, one of Microsoft’s poorly kept secrets, the motion controller. Or rather, lack of controller. Xbox VP Don Mattrick came on stage to introduce Steven Spielberg, who didn’t really have much to contribute beyond his star power, love of games, and excitement over the new controller-less motion controller, code named Project Natal.
So what is Project Natal? It’s a smallish, wide bar that sits under or above your TV and features an integrated webcam and microphone (and possibly some other hardware. We’ll try to get more detail about how it works over the coming days). We were first shown one of those “Vision Videos” that show smiling, TV-pretty people in a fake living room pretending to play mock-up games that show that Microsoft imagines games to be like with this device.
Steer a car by turning your hands while the others on your couch control the pit crew for you, mash your fist into your hand to “buzz in” on 1 vs. 100 and simply say your answer out loud, virtually try on clothes superimposed to your real body, video chat with friends, scan your real-life skateboard to use in a skating game, and so on.
What to Expect From Microsoft
So is it a bunch of smoke and mirrors? Not really. Project director Kudo Tsunoda came on stage to show some live tech demos that give you an idea of how well this thing actually works, today. And it’s impressive. Navigate the Xbox 360 dashboard with a few swipes of your hand. Your avatar mimics the movements of your whole body. A first-person breakout type game showed how it accurately tracks your entire movement in full 3D, so you can move in or out of the screen, kick, step, swing both arms, and so on without holding a thing in your hands. Development kits are said to be arriving to registered developers today.
Finally, Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux came on stage to show what his company has been doing with the Project Natal technology over the last few months, and frankly, it seems too impressive to be true. Milo is a virtual boy, perhaps 8 or 10 years old, realistically rendered in a virtual environment. In a video taken at Lionhead studios, we saw a woman named Claire interact with Milo by simply walking up to the screen and talking to him with pretty natural language. Milo recognized her, followed her position in front of the screen, spoke to her and understood her, and even recognized her emotions and displayed convincing emotions of his own. He virtually “threw” Claire a pair of goggles so she could play with fish in the pond, which she mimed catching and putting on. Claire drew a red fish drawing on a piece of paper, held it up to the camera to “hand” it to Milo in the virtual environment, where he grabbed it, recognized it, and could show it back to her (the camera having scanned the contents of the paper).
Frankly, it’s all too impressive and works too well to be true. It’s absolutely creepy in a very cool and technically amazing way, to the degree where it seems like it must obviously be smoke and mirrors. Molyneux said some select people will get to try Milo out for themselves behind closed doors during the expo, so hopefully we’ll get hands-on (er…hands-off rather) and find out if it’s as totally unbelievable as it seems.
Microsoft’s press conference was so packed with games and features, and so fast paced, they couldn’t even fit everything into two hours. Left out of the press conference, but announced at the same time, is a new Games on Demand feature coming to the Xbox 360. Launching in a few months with a library of 30 games (and more added weekly), you’ll be able to download full Xbox 360 games at a price similar to retail. You won’t use Microsoft Points for these, but instead charge directly to a credit or debit card. Also announced but not at the press conference was an Avatar Marketplace—you knew this was coming.
This is where you’ll be able to buy new clothing and interactive props for your Avatars. Also, games will soon be able to award you Avatar stuff. Xbox Live users will be able to give any content in the Games Marketplace a rating from one to five stars, and you can sort by user rating. Last but not least, a series of performance updates are coming that should improve friends list sorting, achievement views, and faster matchmaking.
Posted By: Situated Research, LLC
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