Yes, I know E3 was a week ago but I’ve had a lot of work to do to finish Universty for the year. Now, finally I have a spare half an hour to blog my reaction to the biggest gaming event of the year; the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Being an avid user of both Facebook and Twitter, the announcement that these two huge social networking websites are coming to Xbox Live was a big one for me. The screenshots of both these applications look like they are extremely well optimised for the Xbox and what's more is, they are both coming free 'this fall', which I understand means ‘autumn’ in American.
Project Natal was clearly the biggest weapon in Xbox's arsenal to take out the competition and it really did, I knew Sony or Nintendo would not be able to touch it. Taking the idea of motion sensor controllers to a whole new level, where you, the gamer and your body are the controllers. The level of interactivity shown in Microsoft's presentation of Project Natal was truly unbelievable. Obviously Nintendo fan boy’s will argue that Project Natal is just a Wii rip off and maybe it is, Nintendo did get the ball rolling for this type of interactive gaming, but Microsoft completely reinvented the wheel this year.
Ok, the idea is cool, but how much will the technology cost? It is clearly aimed at the more ‘family’ market and I am unsure if it will appeal to serious gamers as much, the concept is nice, but wouldn’t they just rather shoot people using a controller on Call of Duty? I can see it now, Call Of Duty: Project Natal, where you use your hand as a gun!? Perhaps I am being too cynical too soon and fair enough Microsoft already has the serious gamers market and needs to appeal to a wider audience and Project Natal is an excellent way to go about it. The demonstration with ‘Milo’ was a bit creepy though, I’m not too sure about that, not only creepy, but it looked extremely childish. Sorry Lionhead.
As for the games that were shown at the show I am very excited about Left 4 Dead 2 and obviously Modern Warfare 2 as well, I hope it’s not just hype, because the gameplay did look amazing! The Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy franchises now being available on Xbox is very big coup for Microsoft and I look forward to playing them!
E3 does get bigger and bigger every year, but this year it was truly unbelievable, with so much competition between the three gaming giants. My non-biased opinion would be that Microsoft did have the best press conference. No-one could have expected what they produced and the technology is just revolutionary. All in all, it was a good show!
