XBox 360 Rally

When I sat down on my couch, I was expecting to have every bit of news, speculation and rumor clarified for us, the people. I had G4 on my TV, I had the 1UP stream in IE, and in Firefox I had the Justin.tv feed via Scot Rubin’s head-cam. After Scot went to the latrine while still having his camera on, I closed Firefox.

Now before I get into any great detail about Microsoft’s Press Conference, let me just say that G4, a network that at one time prided itself as being “by gamers, for gamers” and now prides itself as sort of a nerd hub, did a HORRIBLE job! Now, I could excuse most of the commercial breaks, sure. But when they cut to commercial during the footage of Halo 3’s campaign mode, I threw my remote at the TV. Thankfully, I DID get to see the footage in it’s entirety via the stream. But this was just another prime example of how G4 has become a colossal failure in both it’s content, and it’s management.

Now for the conference. It started around 11:33pm EST when Peter Moore walked on stage wearing some rather sharp threads. He introduced a band to the stage from Illinois. They should have stayed there. After the performance, Moore went on to promise the world that all games (with the exception of Resident Evil 5) will be on store shelves by the end of 2007, and that the 2007 holiday line-up will be the single-greatest video game line-up in history. Pretty hefty guarantee, yes? Well, when you have THESE games coming…

…and others, it’s easy to see how Microsoft can make such a claim. They may very well be right. Now, keep in mind that these are only the games that will be on retail shelves by the end of the year. There were also a number of Xbox Live titles that were promised, including…

…and many others. With the sheer number of games, you can’t help but expect to see Microsoft having a killer holiday season.

A few games were demoed for us: Peter Moore got on Rock Band and threw down, giving is a good showing of what to expect with the Guitar Hero rival. We also got to see Jeff Bell and Reggie Bush play a quick round of Madden NFL 08, in which Reggie Bush broke away for an 80-yard touchdown. We also got to see the lovely Jade Redmond take the stage and show us a sneak-peek of Assassin’s Creed, which looked simply amazing, and the group at Microsoft Game Studios gave us a look at the insanely impressive Project Gotham Racing 4. But the game of the night, the one playable demo that made us all salivate, was for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Rather than trying to describe the video to you all… just watch…

Now, while the promise of “by the end of the year” did make me very happy, especially when one of the first games featured after this promise was made was the uber-sexy Mass Effect, there really were very few surprises. Epic Games and Cliffy B. confirmed the worst-kept secret of the year in announcing Gears of War for the PC, and we did get to see a teaser preview to the new Resident Evil 5 trailer that will be unveiled next week. But besides that, nothing. No big surprises. No tattoos. Absolutely NO mention of whether or not Konami will actually be bringing Metal Gear Solid 4 to the 360. In the end, the Press Conference was basically a reminder and expansion on information we already knew.

Which isn’t bad. Just a bit underwhelming.

Microsoft, Xbox 360, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Dynasty Warriors: GUNDAM, Project Gotham Racing 4, Stranglehold, Guitar Hero III, Lost Odyssey, Beautiful Katamari, Fatal Inertia, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Splinter Cell Conviction, BioShock, Eternal Sonata, Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, Rock Band, Sonic the Hedgehog, Golden Axe, Tetris, Wing Commander Arena, Track & Field, Super Puzzle Fighter II, War Worlds, Puzzle Quest, Peter Moore, Halo 3