Reflections on Microsoft's Conference

Well... Microsoft's big press conference has come and gone. For the most part, I was pretty impressed.

I'm going to get this out of the way right up front: Fallout 3 was the show highlight for me. Yes, yes... I know that Final Fantasy XIII was announced for the 360, and I'm thrilled about that, but Fallout 3 really impressed me. I am a huge Oblivion fan, so the game already had a bit going for it, but the (darkly) humorous style and the over all post-apocalyptic setting of the game piqued my interest. The cinematic-style battle option really impressed me, and (even though graphics don't usually gain my attention) the game was absolutely beautiful.

Of course, Final Fantasy XIII coming to the 360 is no small thing. The game was arguably one of the PS3's biggest potential exclusives, so the newfound lack of exclusivity is definitely a big deal in regards to the market. Besides, Final Fantasy XIII looks like it could be more than a little awesome. Previous game footage reminded me of Phantasy Star Online Episode III's grid-based combat, and (in my book, anyway) that's a very good thing. Make no mistake, I'm very excited about Final Fantasy XIII.

Other big titles, like Gears of War 2, Fable 2, and Resident Evil 5, should be most impressive. I'm not jumping up and down about these releases like I am FFXIII and Fallout 3, but all three have my interest.

On the Xbox Live front, I was very happy to see a true sequel to my favorite arcade shooter of all time, Galaga. Admittedly, I think a South Park game on Xbox Live Arcade could be pretty funny, but I'll hold off any more thoughts on that until more is known about the title (without doubt, it'll contain its share of inappropriate content). Beyond the games themselves, the upcoming changes to Xbox Live left me with rather mixed feelings. The new Live Parties potential is cool in concept, and I don't see why it shouldn't work. The new avatar system, on the other hand, didn't rally impress me at all. Truth be told, I'm not a big fan of such avatar systems to begin with. However, the bigger disappointment to me is that I can't see a Live avatar and not think to myself, "Hey... it's a Mii!"

Still, other new improvements to Live, especially those regarding on-demand content, are more exciting to me. The partnership with Netflix, if done well, is an excellent idea. Providing that high-def content is an option, I'll be even more excited yet. The integration of non-game media and the Live party system is very cool in concept. I don't know if it'll be as great in execution, but I hope that it is.

Of course, there were also the music games making an appearance in full. Rock Band 2's setlist looks very impressive, but I'm even more excited about the ability to edit your own songs in Guitar Hero: World Tour. As good as the packaged and downloadable content of these music games tend to be, there are always obscure songs that I wish I could play from my collection that won't ever be available for download. Being musically adept, this feature makes me very happy. Along similar lines is Lips. I'm not the biggest fan of karaoke style games, but the ability to use music from my own collection is, once again, a very exciting thing.

On the whole, Microsoft impressed me today. There were some things that didn't thrill me, but the things that did managed to excite me very, very much.

-Kenny Yeager (kenny@revolve21.com)