MICROSOFT'S FARCE : AN E3 OPINION

Written by Achyuth Sankar. 


Entertainment usually entails six main forms- plays, movies, music, sports, books and video games. Now the world of literature doesn’t have a central event to celebrate its best, but it does have stuff like the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize. Sports has a major celebratory event for each and every sub-sport, such as Fifa World Cup for football and so on. Movies have the Oscars, music has the Grammies.
But starting from 1995, gaming too can boast of having its own exclusive event celebrating the field and giving the floor to promising talent. The event in question, is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3 for short. 

Held in Los Angeles for four days, E3 has press conferences from major studios and companies, with the last two days dedicated to allowing attendees hands on trials for the showcased games. As is customary, this year’s E3 was held Los Angeles Convention Centre, spanning four days. Day 1 had four press conferences, from Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft. Day 2 had a press conference from Nintendo, followed by the individual demonstrations. What happens after these conferences is that the attendees simply try for themselves what has already been shown off to everyone by the studio executives during the respective press conference. Now, day 1 is usually the most hyped and looked forward to event of E3. And of course, at the end of it, an unofficial debate rages online every year saying which of the big 3 (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) companies “won” E3, a colloquial way of saying which company’s press conference kicked the asses of the other two. Microsoft’s press conference was much hyped, and much anticipated. So how well did they do? Read on to find out… 


As is customary every year, Microsoft kicked off this year’s E3 with their conference being first. This year, they had their own bomb to create a big bang. Halo 4. What proceeded was a demo of a section of a level in Halo 4, taking place in the first parts of the game. Aside from the stunning graphics and the open acknowledgement that the AI Cortana is facing “rampancy” (or going crazy), the demo shed some light into the forerunner presence in the game. To all you fanboys, stop squealing. Yes, Forerunners are the dudes who built the halos in the first place, and it’s really intriguing to see forerunner presence. 

Halo 4 gameplay

And it’s even more intriguing to see how everything will pan out, especially since Halo’s creators, Bungie studios, have nothing to do with the series’ present iteration. Halo 4 is being made by the newly commissioned 343 Industries. As expected, the demo raised everybody’s adrenaline, it looked fantastic, packed a punch, got right down to business, and got everybody excited for an Xbox 360 exclusive. As the demo ended, so began an hour and a half of bore. 

Ascend : New Gods gameplay

Microsoft showed off its surprising (or not so surprising) lack of exclusive IP’s this year, with simply “announcing” Gears Of War:Judgement and Forza Horizon (They only showed off a small trailer depicting cross country racing), along with three other new IP’s which looked or sounded downright ridiculous or borrowed. The first was Ascend: New Gods, which seemed like a God Of War ripoff. Then the next two new IP’s were merely announced, with no footage whatsoever. One was titled Lococycle (really, Lococycle?), and the last one was titled Matter, which showed a globe like thing with a light in its centre rolling forward, with no other details mentioned (it showed promise, atleast from whatever little content that they showed). So far, Halo 4 is the only exclusive that the Xbox 360 has this year. 

See, Microsoft, if we wanted a live performance of a song, we’d have gone to see a goddamn gig instead of sitting at an E3 conference!

Microsoft dedicated its conference to resurrect its flagship product, the Kinect. But all Microsoft had to offer was a disappointing roster of features and games, which only went on to prove that the very company which made Kinect could not harness its potential. One of the Kinect games showcased was Dance Central 3, which was identical to its predecessor in all ways possible, and Microsoft began the game’s intro by having Usher sing and dance on stage, which was more of a turn off than Microsoft may have intended. See, Microsoft, if we wanted a live performance of a song, we’d have gone to see a goddamn gig instead of sitting at an E3 conference. Another Kinect feature announced was the partnership with Nike. The new product, Nike+ Kinect Trainer is a new app/product which will act as your ideal trainer, and why Microsoft expects us gamers to be excited about this is beyond my comprehension. 
We aren’t fitness freaks, Microsoft, we’re gamers. Hardcore gamers who watch E3 only to revel at what the video game companies have to offer, not people who like to use their consoles to work out. Even kids won’t use that feature!! 

Why Microsoft expects us gamers to be excited about Nike+Kinect is beyond my comprehension.  

Kinectgiri aside, one really exciting (but potentially gimmicky) feature was revealed by Microsoft : The Xbox SmartGlass.

This is the technology by which the Xbox 360 can be paired with a windows phone, tablet, android devices and iOS devices, allowing the devices to act as second screens or instantly access and provide information regarding the movie/music/game being run on the Xbox 360. The technology shows immense promise, but judging by what happened with Kinect and the question of how these features will be implemented and integrated into hardcore games, I’m a little sceptical.

Microsoft then showed off an Angry Birds-ripoff game for the Kinect where you control a catapult and have to destroy castles. It’s called Wrecketeer, and I don’t know why they even bothered showing it at E3, let alone making the game in the first place. 
While not exclusives, some really amazing demos were shown during the conference, namely Resident Evil 6, Assassin’s Creed III, Splinter Cell:Blacklist, Tomb Raider and Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2.

They also spent some time highlighting as to how the Xbox 360 can become the entertainment hub of a person, with an ever-expanding music library, partnership with ESPN and a couple of other sports channels, HBO Go, the ever-increasing library of movies and tv shows. All good, but people usually buy consoles to play, and although this adds value to the 360, it doesn’t let us forget the fact that Microsoft has not performed will on the most primary function : gaming.  
Overall, the conference was really very underwhelming, and left a lot of loyal Xbox 360 owners crying for more, and a lot of Nintendo/Sony lovers laughing with glee. Why Microsoft hasn’t realised that it needs a lot more Triple A exclusive titles and not more and more mundane Kinect features beats me, along with the fact that the presenter still claims Xbox was the number one selling console last year. Really? With so many disappointing features that only get more disappointing this year? Who’re you kidding?