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Microsoft @ E3 2007 - Games, Games, Games and an Olive 360

Microsoft's E3 2007 Press Conference has come and gone, and there was a rather massive dearth of really earth-shattering stuff. Much like last year, really. Hell, last year I didn't even do a recap.

Tonight's press event was all about games. Microsoft is past fiddling with hardware (maybe), and is seriously focusing on content. And it's not content slated for way out in the distant future, the first big announcement was that all games Microsoft showed will be out in 2007. Except Resident Evil 5, but they specifically said no RE5. More about that later.

For standard 360 games, there was more than I could really list off. At points they were throwing stuff out faster than I can type. Microsoft is largely looking forward to a banner holiday season, thanks to the triple-threat of GTA4, Madden 08 and Halo 3.

One game that got the closest thing to a nailed-down date we've gotten in awhile was Mass Effect, which Microsoft currently has slated for November. Don't have an exact date, but at least a month is more than "eventually".

On the desperately-seeking-to-capture-the-casual-games-market front, Microsoft secured the exclusive rights to the first console port of the apparently wildly popular board game SceneIt. It comes with four can't-believe-it's-not-a-Wiimote wireless buzzers. No date on this one yet, or a price, but really I think anyone who wants SceneIt probably has it already. Then again, people sure do apparently love buying things they already have, so what do I know?

On the EA-presents-sports-games front, the big news here was that starting next week with NCAA Football 08, EA's Sports 08 lineup on the 360 will all be 60FPS. I will believe this when I see it.

They had a ton of news over in XBL land. Slew of new games coming out, many of which are completely new titles. Ones we've heard about previously, like the Wing Commander game I'm still pissed about are still around, but almost everything else was brand new. The highlights from their montage as far as I'm concerned were A new classic-style Bomberman (you know, because Hudson apologized for Act Zero), Sonic 1, Track & Field (seriously), Golden Axe, Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo, Marathon: Durandal, and Puzzle Quest. Sonic and Golden Axe are apparently up on Marketplace right now.

I'm slightly confused about the Marathon entry. There were some rumors earlier in the year that the trilogy had been rated by the German equivalent of the ESRB, targeted for the 360, but the montage labeled it as just Marathon: Durandal. That's Marathon 2. What happened to Marathon and Marathon: Infinity? Who knows. Hopefully we'll get this clarified later in the week.

Digital video distribution is apparently a much bigger deal via Live Marketplace than I thought, and to help push that along Microsoft has inked yet another massive deal with Disney and Disney's affiliated studios (like Miramax) to put a ton of their movies online for purchase via XBL Marketplace. In HD. Tonight. Additionally, Microsoft will be expanding Video stuff to Canada and Europe later in the year.

After all that it was time for a bit of PC gaming. Not a ton, though, because PC gaming obviously isn't important enough for Microsoft to spend too much of their time talking about, despite the fact that so many games are dual-platform 360/PC these days. The big news here was ports, specifically Viva Piñata and Gears of War. Gears of War was the real focus, and internet gaming developer superstar CliffyB came out to tell us that yes, we already knew GOW was coming to PC thanks to a leak last week, but we didn't know that it would be coming with a level editor, extra PC-exclusive content, online coop would be intact, Live stuff would be intact, AND it is not going to be Vista exclusive.

This flies in the face of the last remaining excuse Microsoft had as to why both Shadowrun and Halo 2 for PC were Vista exclusive. First they said "DX10! DX10! DX10!" Then it turned out there was no DX10 stuff in either game. Then it was "Oh, we can't do Live stuff on XP, it's too hard to backport!" And now here we are at E3 and Cliffery says it'll all be there on XP. Great job Microsoft, at least you're setting it straight for GOW. Maybe that won't send it straight to the bargain bin like Shadowrun PC and Halo 2 PC.

Additionally, they mentioned that thanks to the work done to get Live stuff from GoW ported over from 360 to PC, Epic Games went ahead and built Live integration into the Unreal 3 Engine, so all future games built with the U3 Engine will be able to easily interact with Live for Windows. So expect to see lots more of Live for Windows as U3 Engine games start getting released.

Before wrapping up, they showed off a couple more games. Like the old GTA4 trailer, with the new bonus dig at Sony that the trailers were all capped off 360 hardware. Plus, as we were told earlier, there will be two installments of GTA4 episodic content that'll be exclusive to the 360, and will be expected to be out by Spring 2008. We also got confirmation that Beautiful Katamari is really coming to the 360, but won't be an exclusive (the other platform is a coin toss, really). Some stuff was shown of Call of Duty 4, and they announced a 360 MP beta that you can sign up for at CharlieOscarDelta.com, assuming you can get it to load. They also showed the first video I can think of for Resident Evil 5, but only showed a tiny snippet of it, the full trailer will be out on July 26th. RE5 came with a big disclaimer that it was the only game they're showing anything of that won't be out this year. But it was so good that they just had to show it off.

The Assassin's Creed demo was . . . a thing. I don't know what was going on there, but it just didn't seem right. As such, I'll wait to talk about it until we get a sane demo of it when they actually seem prepared. Cause I know what they were doing wasn't representative of the game.

And finally, to wrap things up, some Halo. And a new console announcement . . sorta. Coming straight out of the I'm-still-not-certain-what-I-watched department, they started off this last segment of the conference by name-dropping Neill Blomkamp, Peter Jackson and Weta. All people supposedly/maybe working on the still stalled Halo movie. And then what do they show? Some live-action 1-2 minute long Halo 3 promo. Is this what they're doing now that their studio funding has been pulled? It was neat and all, but some answers would be nice here.

After that it was console time. Not being content with extracting $129.99 from rabid Halo fans for the "legendary edition" of Halo 3, or $69.99 for the "limited edition", or $249.99 for a Halo 3 Zune, Microsoft has made a whole bonus 360 model for Halo 3. We don't know the specifics yet, but Bungie says it has an HDMI port. This might make it just a re-painted Elite, or it might make it a completely different model, somewhere between the Elite and the Pro. Or it might be even more of a comedy option, by going beyond the Elite's 120Gb drive. No clue on the price yet, either, but we expect to hear that later.

Then, to wrap things up completely, the new Halo 3 trailer, showing the first single player action. I won't bother trying to explain it. Watch it for yourself in glorious HD thanks to Bungie.

Overall, Microsoft is showing yet again that when it comes to software, they're the ones to beat when it comes to quantity, quality, first-party exclusives, third-party exclusives, third-party non-exclusives, everything. They're not fiddling too much with hardware, at least not like Sony, and it's because they really don't need to right now. The only thing they might consider doing with hardware in the near future is a price drop to mirror Sony's, but they don't need it so desperately that they have to make it right this minute. They still have games, and in a console war, it always comes down to who has the games. Microsoft has shown that they have the games now, and they have a TON of games coming out later this year.

While Nintendo might match the star power of Halo 3 with Smash Bros Brawl or Metroid Prime 3, they don't have the same variety or quantity of titles Microsoft has lined up. And despite all the claims Kaz Hirai & friends over at Sony have made about the 300+ games they're going to have over the next year, I don't see it happening, yet over at Microsoft they've already got it, and are specifically showing us. And don't get me started about the lack of exclusive triple-a games Sony has lined up.

Microsoft has again had a very solid showing. Now it's just time to see if Nintendo or Sony can pull out a miracle similar to what Nintendo did last year. . . and we'll find out in about 10 hours when those press conferences happen. Due to the close proximity of the two conferences later today, I probably won't update between them, but instead do two updates after the Sony conference ends.

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