E3 madness

I just want to go ahead and say that Microsoft has officially won E3.Thats right and if anyone doesn't agree with me then you obviously haven't watched all 3 press conferences.Sony's was boring , full of lackluster games and let's not forget about how they totally blew it on the price as well as the "newly redesigned" (hehe) controller.Sony pretty much took a dual shock2 ,made it wirelss,ripped off Nintendo's tilt sensor tech,ripped off Microsoft's trigger buttons AND the guide button(Sony's controller has a playstation logo as a button that acts as the guide button).Apparently allmost all of the gaming media feels the same way too.

As for Nintendo's,i didn't see anything that impressed me really.I thought maybe Nintendo was gonna come out ,announce the price and release date,show some badass functionality that we haven't seen out of the new controller yet and top it off with a flurry of must-have games.Didn't happen.

Microsoft, on the other hand, started the show off with Cliffy B. playing Gears of War (in real time),moved on to Peter Moore announcing Forza2,Fable2,GTA4,Mass Effect,Too Human,ShadowRun,Viva Pinata,Splinter Cell:Double Agent,Moto GP '06,all the new sports games,and many more.Then he announced that a wireless steering wheel,with force feedback will ship with Forza2.He then went on to announce and show the new Xbox360 camera and HD DVD player add-on.

During this time he also announced a flurry of awesome games coming to Xbox mLive Arcade including Galaga,Frogger,Street Fighter2 Hyper Fighting,Ultra Mortal Kombat 3 and a bunch more that I can't think of right now.

After all this Bill Gates comes out on stage and announces"Lve Anywhere".Microsoft is bringing the Xbox's Live service to all it's other formats which consists of Windows PC's and cell phones running Windows Mobile Tecnology.They also announced that since All of Microsoft Games are now under the same division,wheter it be Xbox,Xbox360,Games for Windows PC's or Cell phones,we will see alot more games launching simultaneously for Xbox360 and Windows.

They said that when Windows Vista ships next year it will have the software for the Live service built in from the start,which means that you actively see your gamertag and the Xbox360 "blades" on your Windows PC.An example of how all of this will work was shown,it showed a guy working on his Windows PC and his buddy is playing ShadowRun on Xbox360.His buddy wants to play with him and sends him a game invite,the game invite shows up on his Windows dektop and gives him all the options that we currently get on the Xbox360 like,viewing your friends list,comparing games and achievements,settings,etc.,etc.,.So he accepts the game invite from his Windows PC and begins playing ShadowRun over Live ,from his PC ,with his buddy who is playing it on his Xbox360.

So there you have it,the Live service will be available to us no matter if we are on the computer or on our cell phones.Another neat little example that they showed was where a sent his buddy a car paintjob for Forza2 on his cell phone,he then has several options on his phone including (but not limited too) slightly altering the paint job,downloading more or even sending to his PC.If he sends it to his computer he then has the option to go into a custom editing program for Forza2 (on his PC still) and change or even completely redesign the decals and paint.When it's all said and done it can be sent to his Xbox360 where he can race with the new design.

I'm very excited about this because I think that the idea of uniting Windows and Xbox is long over due.The possibilities of bringing all these(Windows,Xbox,Cell phones)platforms together only means better games and interaction for us,the consumers.

After all was said and Peter Moore rejoined Bill Gates on stage and said that before they left the stage they would like to show the crowd a preview of an upcoming game that they might be familiar with,and,as I'm sure evryone knows by now,it was Halo3.

If you haven't seen the trailer for Halo3 yet then you can check it out here.