Games
Microsoft pulls out all the stops at E3 2009 Xbox 360 Media Briefing
By Eli Green June 17, 2009 - 22:30
E3
may have ended over a week ago, but that doesn't mean that there's
nothing else to talk about. More specifically, I've been away from
The Bin for a week, so whatever I was writing the week before somehow
ended up getting severely delayed. The point is, I apologize to you,
dear readers. Feel free to leave your scathing comments below.
Though
Microsoft's Xbox 360 Media Briefing took place the day before E3, I
saved it for last, specifically because I felt it was the best,
though only by a slim margin. The Sony
Briefing
did have a lot of cool stuff to show and, considering I'm not a fan
of the Playstation platforms overall, seriously impressed me. When
Microsoft's Briefing began, an announcer came on over the speakers,
the lights dimmed and the Xbox 360 startup played on the screens,
followed up by a montage of The Beatles clips and songs. It was the
opening cinematic for The
Beatles: Rock Band.
Alex
Rigopolous and the Harmonix house band then came out on stage to play
through the demo for the game, and I was immediately blown away. Yes,
I already knew the game is coming this September and that it would
include three part vocal harmonies, but I didn't know how they would
do it. Well, they did it up right! Three wireless microphones! There
were six people playing Day
Tripper
simultaneously. Six! Now, that said, you could still play the game
with four players, with two of the guitarists (or the drummer)
singing, like the real band used to do. The only thing missing now is
the third guitar.
Giles
Martin then came out on stage to talk about how he worked with
developers to bring the songs to life especially for the game, and
introduced the first ten songs, as well as the game's trailer.
After
the trailer, Rigopolous then made the announcement
about the availability of the Abbey Road album and All
You Need Is Love as
DLC and the proceeds for the purchase of the song going to Doctors
Without Borders. Danny Harrison, the folks at Apple Corps are then
thanked by Martin, as well as Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, who were
then brought out on stage for a quick wave. Paul McCartney and Ringo
Starr then came onto the stage with All
You Need Is Love
playing them in. “The game is good, the graphics are Very Good, and
we were great,” says Starr. “We love the game, it's fantastic.
Who ever thought we'd end up as Androids,” said McCartney. It was
shameless, but necessary promotion.
Microsoft's John Schapert then came out on stage to do the official Briefing
introduction. He talked about the industry doing well in uncertain
economic times and how people want entertainment now, especially in
tough time, and how the 360 is a full fledged, multifaceted
entertainment device. He kept it short, going straight to saying that
they would be showcasing 10 world premieres that day. “Enough of
the telling,” he said, Let's get on with the showing.”
Tony
Hawk immediately came out on stage to introduce Tony
Hawk: Ride
and the final design of the skateboard controller. He talked about
all the work that went into creating the board and why he felt now
was the right time to introduce a skateboarding game with a board
controller, thanks Robomodo for all the work they've done to make the
controller feel as realistic as possible. The game's trailer then
played and Hawk subsequently left without showing off the board in
any way.
Then
the room went dark, the screens lit up once more and the trailer for
Call
of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came
on. Two of the game's designers then came out to show off the game in
action. The demo shows off a mission on a snow driven peak, with ice
climbing and a near fall to the death. They then skipped ahead to
fighting in the snow (I guess the climbing portion's a bit long). The
music and gameplay appeared quite intense, but kind of reminded me of
the opening sequence in Tomorrow Never Dies, but with a partner this time, and at a much
larger base. They skipped ahead again, this time to show off
snowmobiling while shooting. I still haven't played the first Modern
Warfare,
but I want to now. I can see why it was so popular. After
the demo, Schapert came back on and announced that there will be two
Modern Warfare 2
map packs being released on Xbox 360 first. The game itself will be
releasing on November 10th.
Schapert
then introduced the the producer and director of Final
Fantasy XIII to
the stage to introduce the game by showing off a demo of a fight with
a mecha boss. There are now four active time gauges, making things
more complicated, but adding more action to the turn based fighting.
To show off some of the cooler stuff that will appear in the game,
they specially coded in Odin for the fight (thus unveiling the power
for the first in the world) even though it won't actually be
available that early in the game. It certainly looked great, but the
move felt a little bit anti-climactic. The game is targeted for a
Spring 2010 release.
Schapert
then came back on to start the parade of Xbox 360 exclusives. He
introduced Cliffy B and Donald Mustard from Epic Games out to demo
the first ever Epic Games Xbox Live Arcade title, Shadow
Complex.
It's a 2D/3D side-scrolling multilevel game with over 120 items, and
more than 10 hours of gameplay. Boss battles are supposed to be
intense. It's set to release this summer.
Schapert
then showed off a trailer for Joy
Ride,
another Live Arcade game, from Big Park (recently acquired by
Microsoft). It's a free racing game you can play with your avatar. Of
course, it wouldn't be much good to Microsoft to have no way to make
money off of a property, so you can buy cars, upgrades or more. A
cool note though, is that purchased maps can be shared, even if your
friend doesn't have them. Joy
Ride will
be releasing this winter.
Then
came an onslaught of trailers. Crackdown
2,
then Left
4 Dead 2 (360
and PC), and finally Splinter
Cell: Conviction.
Two developers from Ubisoft then came on to demo Conviction.
The demo opened with Sam Fisher interrogating a guy, asking who
killed his daughter. While one of the two developers played, the
other explained that the game's story unfolds in real time, and
explained new gameplay elements, including Fisher's new ability,
Mark. When preparing for an assault, you simply take aim, mark
Fisher's targets and then he does the work. Of course, classic
elements still remain, including the franchise's stealth aspects, but
new features play a big role. One of the cooler features is that the
objectives embed themselves into the world, on the walls or in
Fisher's path, kind of like he's seeing them in his head. It's also
possible for him to charge into a room, but it's better to plan out
his attack. At the end of the level, the demo ended and they
announced that the game is coming as a 360 exclusive this fall. I
think I'm going to have to catch up on the franchise.
Schapert
then returned to the stage to announce Forza
Motorsport 3.
Dan Greenwalt from Turn10 then came on to talk about and demo the
game. They showed off the first person view and the ability to look
around the cockpit. The game will include makes from 400
manufacturers, including more than 450 cars. It will also include
more community features, for connecting and sharing their own
content. They followed the demo with a commercial made with the video
editor in the game. I wondered how they put the music in, but I can
believe that if someone took enough time to put it together, they
might be able to do something similar with the visual portion. The
game ships in October.
Joe
Staten followed immediately after by demonstrating Halo
3: ODST.
The game's story begins three weeks before the start of Halo
3.
ODSTs have access to weapons and gear Spartans don't, including a
night vision visor and suppression weapons. Staten also explained
that you'll play the stories of various ODSTs to uncover the mystery
of what happened in New Mombasa. The game comes out on September
22nd.
Staten
then, finally, revealed Bungie's secret project. It's another Halo
game
called Halo
Reach.
If you buy Halo
3: ODST,
you'll get an invitation to take part in the beta for Reach.
From what it looks like, Reach
will
be a prequel to the original Halo,
the true introduction to the story.
Sam
Lake from Remedy then came on stage to demonstrate Alan
Wake.
Nothing particularly new was shown, but they showed of the gameplay
overall. Alan narrates his story as you play through the game (this
is quickly becoming a Remedy signature style). They are also still
making use of slow motion effects. The game is scheduled for released
in Spring 2010.
Schapert then returned
to the stage talk about various new Xbox partnerships, including a
number of social media applications specially retooled for the living
room. last.fm will be free to Xbox Live Gold members later this year,
Netflix will have its own menu for NXE, the United Kingdom and
Ireland will get SkyTV on Xbox 360 and more. The Xbox 360 video
service is turning into Zune HD service in full 1080p. The content
will be available as instant on HD. Movies, TV and music will be
available to watch/listen/play over Xbox Live parties, so you can
enjoy your media with your friends, not just at your place, but
online as well.
He then announced a
partnership with Facebook. Felicia Day came on to introduce Facebook
on Xbox 360 and showed of Friendlinker and how it links your Xbox
Friends and your Facebook friends. Facebook Connect will work with
your games as well. Xbox Live will also work with Twitter. They're
both going to be introduced this fall.
Schapert,
who must have been tired from all the entering and leaving the stage
by that point, returned yet again to reiterate all of the games and
new features that had been shown by that point. He welcomed Don
Mattrick, Senior VP of Xbox, to introduce Hideo Kojima and Metal
Gear for
Xbox 360, Metal
Gear Solid Rising.
The trailer played and Kojima then explained that it's not a Solid
Snake adventure, but a Raiden adventure. Mattrick remained on stage
to talk about the history of Xbox and then started talking about the
brand's future.
He
then unveiled Project Natal, pronounced Nuh-tall, a camera based
control system which includes motion and voice recognition. He
explained that they posed a question to their team, “Can we go
beyond the controller?”. The Project Natal trailer (below) then
played. Mattrick then announced this as the introduction to
“controller free games and entertainment” and promised that it
will work with every Xbox 360 already sold and every Xbox 360 that
will be sold in the future.
Mattrick
then brought Steven Spielberg out to the stage to introduce his Xbox
360 project. Or so I thought. They talked about Spielberg's
experience with Project Natal when he was introduced to it two months
ago. “It's not about reinventing the wheel. It's about no wheel at
all”, he said. Kudo Tsunoda then came out to actually show off
Project Natal. Not only does it have motion capture, but full body
capture and facial recognition. He showed how to control the
dashboard with his hand and then launched a full body athletic tech
demo (below) called Ricochet
(looks
sort of like dodgeball, but you're aiming the balls at bricks).
Tsunoda continued on to insult the “preset waggle commands” of
the Wii Remote and then explained that the demo is currently single
player, but they plan to make Project Natal games multiplayer.
He then had another
demonstrator show off a painting demo called Splat (below). The demo
shows off the voice recognition (the colours change when you call
them out), as well as the body capture, with the Pose mode. Pose mode
basically spreads a “stencil paper” on top of the canvas. It's
essentially a silhouette program. I think it will be interesting to
see what silhouette artists do with it.
Finally, to end off the
show, Peter Molyneux was introduced to the stage. He said that
controller has been the biggest barrier to what developers want to
create, but what they do with Project Natal will “change the
landscape”. He then showed off a video of what his team at Lionhead
Studios has done with Project Natal, and with that, the Briefing was
over.
Out of the big three
console manufacturers' media briefings, I found Microsoft's to be the
best. They had the most to show, and it did exactly what it was
supposed to do; show off all the new stuff coming out for Xbox 360
over the next year. They didn't bulk it up with anything unnecessary
or stuff in statistics. For a two hour long briefing, it was exciting
and enjoyable. Only Sony's briefing came close to being that good. If
Microsoft continues on this path, it's going to be a good year for
the Xbox 360.