E3 2010: The Best and Worst of Microsoft's Press Conference

By now, you've probably seen Microsoft's press conference -- or at least have heard all about it. Lots of games where you shoot stuff! Plenty of Wii-like games without the Wii controllers! And a sleeker, quieter, and hopefully more reliable Xbox 360...free for everyone in attendance! It was certainly a wild presser, so let's break it down simply and straightforward-like:

Enough already: Call of Duty: Black Ops' debut. We're all sick of "modern combat" games now, and most of them aren't even out yet. It's the new World War 2...but worse (this year: Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 downloadable content...).

Could be cool: Halo: Reach...in space. I've always considered Halo's controls to be the best in the biz, so I expect its spaceship dogfighting to be pretty darn good. And the inside word is that it is pretty darn good.

Could've cured cancer: Microsoft claimed gamers have spent 2 billion hours online playing Halo multiplayer.

Good for them: Microsoft's sense of humor. During a cheesy demo of Video Kinect, two sisters watched The Last Airbender's movie trailer together online, over video chat. One asked the other, "Hey, isn't that a video game, too?" to which the other replied, "Yeah, some of my coworkers played it just to boost their Gamerscore." That's in reference to the easiest 1000 points worth of Achievements known to man.

Hmm, I can actually use this: ESPN sports games live or on demand, free to Xbox Live Gold members? That's actually very useful. Just don't go looking for any USC bowl games anytime soon....

Gonna teach a lot of kids poor spelling habits: Kinect Sports, Kinect Joy Ride, Kinect Adventures!, Kinectimals...

Gonna be ugly: The Harmonix developers doing the demo of Dance Central for Kinect? They've had a lot of practice. You're not going to look anywhere as cool, trust us.

Now 100% less annoying: The Jenny McCarthy-free Your Shape: Fitness Evolved.

Remember when: Microsoft introduced Natal and everyone talked about what genres they wouldn't want to play on it? Driving games is one of them. No one, and I mean no one wants to hold their hands up in the air for extended periods of time, pretend holding a steering wheel. So...no thanks, Forza Motorsport and Kinect Joy Ride. Hopefully not up next: first-person shooters.

Bigger? Badder? More bad ass? Gears of War 3? I'd say so.

Why is everyone cheering? Star Wars for Kinect looks terrible! You might as well cheer for Lethal Enforcers. Unless the ones cheering were 10-year olds. Then we forgive you.

Louder than the World Cup: The collective cheer when Microsoft announced that they'd be giving everyone in attendance at the live press event a free Xbox 360 "slim." By the way, in case you didn't see our Tweet, we'll be giving ours away to a Bitmob community member sometime after we receive it.

Biggest collective groan: When the room full of spillover spectators who were watching the conference on a live feed realized they weren't getting that free 360 -- it was only for the first group who was actually there.

Tags: Battlefield: Bad Company 2, E3 2010, Medal of Honor, Halo: Reach, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Gears of War 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Kinectimals, Kinect Sports, Kinect Joy Ride, Kinect Adventures!, Dance Central, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, Forza Motorsport, Lethal Enforcers

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Richard Moss

June 15, 2010

I really want to try Dance Central. It looks like it might be the dance game I've been waiting for. Then again, I am a dancer, so my standards and expectations are probably a little different to most other people.

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James DeRosa

I assume I am not the only one that thinks that giving away free 360s was kind of an ugly move. And I'm not talking about the fact that those watching at home didn't get one....

Lance Darnell

I am pumped for Reach and shocked that Microsoft just made the same mistakes Nintendo did at their conference in 2006.

@James - You are not the only one.

Keith Schloemer

Reach and Gears look really, really good. Shoe, I'm glad someone else noticed that both Dance Central and Star Wars are disasters in the making, each with their own unique faults.

I mean Star Wars looked really, really not good. Sad to see this license go down the path of the terrible.. again.

Maybe Star Wars will go the way of Alan Wake... go back into the cave of development for another 5 years and come out looking.. good?

Greg Ford

Glad to see a few people here weren't impressed by the Star Wars tease. I thought I'd be the only one since, based on initial reactions, people seemed like they were giving the game a pass because it was filling that "motion-controlled lightsaber"/Star Wars kid dream.

As for Halo: Reach, I'm at least hearing a positive buzz in my Twitter feed from people who have seen the space parts up close, so that's promising. Perhaps not overly surprising since Halo's controls have typically carried over to vehicles.