My overall feeling from Microsoft’s conference this year was unfortunately resounding disappointment. It did have a few impressive and exciting moments, but the lack of anything unexpected and no real surprises made for quite a dull hour and a half. I was actually getting bored towards the end of this and kept checking the time which is not what I wanted during the most exciting games conferences of the year.
Before I go on about what let me down in Microsoft’s performance this year I’m starting with what impressed me in this year’s offerings. The show opened with two breathtaking and action-packed demos full of previously unseen gameplay. Both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Tomb Raider kicked off the day’s events with a bang that unfortunately turned into a low sizzle by the end. Interestingly enough these two games which appeared to almost be Microsoft’s biggest selling points for the day are both non-exclusives. Anyone with a PS3 or a PC will be able to have a great time with these and since there appears to be no kinect functionality for either of them it’s hard to see why there was such an emphasis on them in a show about the Xbox 360.
The rest of the show, and in fact most of the show was based on the kinect which Microsoft seem to be pushing more than most people expected. It seems like Microsoft are now aiming kinect at families and trying to take over from the Wii as being the next “all ages gaming” console. This basically included a whole new array of kinect games for kids and a sort of ‘kinect sports’ which looked eerily similar to the opposing Wii Sports. Some of the new kid’s games did look great for the younger gamers out there, but the lengthy demonstration with the two children on stage playing Kinect Disneyland was awkward to watch.
Putting aside the array of children and family orientated games, the area in which kinect really shone for me was in Fable: The Journey, Ryse and Kinect Star Wars. These are the types of games I would be expecting from the 360 and also the type where the kinect can really be utilized to its full potential. Fable was especially impressive as the man on stage demonstrated how to cast spells using only your body. Another aspect of kinect that this conference was really pushing was in-game voice recognition. This was demonstrated live through Mass Effect 3 gameplay. While the gameplay itself looked great I can’t see myself ever really taking to this voice recognition. I don’t mind speaking while playing games if I am communicating with other people in multiplayer, but the thought of just sitting alone in my lounge room and talking out-loud to a single player campaign is just too strange for me. Not to mention the fact that in the ME series the voice recognition is used to make decisions, which are actually much faster just to click on rather than read out loud so in the end this feature makes things longer for you.
The voice recognition was impressive during the demo for Tom Clancy’s Future Soldier as it utilized a very intricate gun customization system. Again though I wouldn’t really feel comfortable speaking out loud to a TV on my own, or even with friends around… and I did notice that aiming the gun while using kinect seemed very shaky compared to say a controller or a mouse. Then of course we have the big title exclusives which are Halo 4 and Gears of War 3. The Gears presentation was very impressive but the Halo teaser didn’t really have much to it.
Overall this year’s Microsoft press conference was a letdown with basically no surprises at all. The highlights for me were the Tomb Raider gameplay and Fable for Kinect but it felt like they were spending too much time focusing on kinect and didn’t have much else to offer. The amount of Wii-replica games to try and break into the casual and family gaming markets also felt like a bit of a cop-out. I hope the rest of the press conferences this year offer me a bit more than what Microsoft did.
-Sophie
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