Microsoft's E3 Conference tonight

[Nook29]

Microsoft's E3 conference is scheduled for tonight, and I'm rather looking forward to it. There's a number of games I'm looking forward to seeing more of, such as Fable 2, Gears 2, Viva Pinata 2 etc., and I'm hoping some new announcements will be made.

It'll be streamed live on G4TV.com

[Mr.Kart]

Last year G4 stopped their streaming of the press conferences at times for commercials. It was horrible. They always did it at the worst times, like right when the Halo 3 trailer was shown. Therefore, I'll be doing Gamespot's live feed, as there's was spot on with no breaks last year.

[Nook29]

Apparently the big three conferences won't have commercials, but I'll be using Gamespot's too (only just discovered they were doing it again this year). Less than 45 minutes to go.

[Meltd0wn]

G4TV this year has been "claiming" commercial free coverage of the big 3 press confrences. I hope that true, because Im wathing it on my TV. I know like every year If i try to stream online it will keep lagging and I miss half of what is going on.

[Nook29]

I ended up watching it on IGN, which worked fine with good quality and sound.

Overall, an average conference overall. Some big news, some boring stuff and some obvious stuff.

[SuperNintendoFreak]

I was going to tell you about how great IGN's coverage was Nook..but I'm glad you found out for yourself. The conference was decent I guess.
FFXIII coming to 360, Banjo+G2 trailers..cool.

[Nook29]

They focused too much on music games IMO. It was about half an hour of 'we have the best music games ever, and they're really important blah blah'.

Good to see Rock Band 2 as an exclusive. Lips is just a Singstar ripoff, but at least you can add your own tracks.

[SuperNintendoFreak]

Yeah, but I started to get bored around the "Microsoft Mii" part. (What are they called?)

Then I got reinterested around the G2 second demo. ;D

[Mr.Kart]

I posted my opinions on the conference in another thread, lol.

Just to clarify, though, the whole Rock Band 2 being exclusive to 360 is misleading. It's releasing on 360 FIRST in September, but a Wii and PS3 version will be following up around December. Kind of old news, but the way the guy said it was very misleading.

And I stuck with G4's coverage, and I was actually very impressed with them this year. No commercials was very nice to see.

I'd say a somewhat below average conference for Microsoft this year. One big, new announcement that no one saw coming (FFXIII), one big announcement that was already leaked (dashboard/avatars), and then little tiny tidbits here and there. I was a little disappointed, and I think the past two years were better. But still, not quite Sony '05 bad.

[SuperNintendoFreak]

Here are my final thoughts on MS's conference:

Overall, it was pathetic. There wasn't ONE big announcement that would affect the 360 drastically.


-Fable looks terrible.
-FFXIII may be coming to PS3/360, but it's probably not going to be out for another 2 years.

Tell me, what could even make the conference acceptable? There were some good trailers for:

+Gears 2
+Banjo
+FFXIII
+Star Ocean 4

But that's it. All they really showed was terrible, casual-directed nonsense that could be better done on Wii, IMO. 4/10.

[Nook29]

Jul 14, 2008 20:48:13 GMT -5 SuperNintendoFreak said:

Overall, it was pathetic. There wasn't ONE big announcement that would affect the 360 drastically.

Erm, I'm pretty sure FFXII will make a big difference. This pretty much confirms PS3's third place in the west. I agree, it won't come out at the same time as the PS3 version, but it won't be two years, probably not a whole year. Only the massive FF fans will be buying it on PS3 at launch, whilst others will see sense and wait for the 360 version. This is a big announcement, there's a reason why most gaming forums on the internet have gone into meltdown (the PS3 forums are particularly amusing, they're talking about crashing Microsoft's and Square's servers :.

Fable 2 looks excellent. The first game was wonderful, but too on rails. The online looks brilliant, at the press of a button, your mate is in the game with you, and you can see where your friends are at all times with those cool little orbs.

It wasn't the best conference, I'd give it around a 6/10, typical Microsoft leak all their announcements before the show, other than FF, and I'm not a big fan of it anyway (although I'll be looking into it now). Now to see what the others do today.

[SuperNintendoFreak]

"Erm, I'm pretty sure FFXII will make a big difference."

So the only big thing in the whole conference was a game that we know isn't coming for at least another 1-2 years? I'm not trying to act like a troll or anything, but their conference was seriously terrible, IMO.

"This pretty much confirms PS3's third place in the west."

I don't see how. GTA, DMC, and (just for kicks) H3 were all supposed to "finish" the PS3, but they didn't. All it did was cancel the PS3 from being able to sell maybe millions of consoles+copies of games since [insert big multi platform game] was available on a cheaper console.

" I agree, it won't come out at the same time as the PS3 version, but it won't be two years, probably not a whole year."

Oh, it'll be a year or longer. Square plans on finishing and releasing the Japanese version before they even start working on the translation and 360 version.

[Nook29]

It's not about 'finishing' the PS3, as you put it. The PS3 will never be finished, look at the PSP. It was slaughtered by the DS, but it isn't finished. People will still buy PS3's, and those who have them will continue to support them. But the 360 is miles ahead, and it's looking to stay that way. I'm talking purely from a sales point of view when it comes to winning, and a game which was previously hailed as one of the best games to come out for PS3, suddenly moving to the 360, regardless of when it releases, is damaging.

The game isn't coming out in Japan on 360 anyway, so that's irrelevant. The 360 version won't be much longer than a year after the translated PS3 version.

[SuperNintendoFreak]

"The game isn't coming out in Japan on 360 anyway, so that's irrelevant."

I was talking about the US version.

[Nook29]

Then why did you mention translation? The 360 and PS3 both use the same version of the English language.

It won't be as long as you say. You'll see that Microsoft will sell more in this console war than Sony, unless Sony drop a megaton announcement in their conference.

[SuperNintendoFreak]

No, as in the JPN version has to be translated into English, THEN that translation is going applied to the PS3 version and the 360 version. (which will be developed at the same time as the translation is being done) ;D

[Nook29]

So how will that take 2 years to do? They're not developing an entirely new game, they're making it work on a different console.

Lets just agree to disagree.

[Nook29]

Just to confirm, Final Fantasy XIII will be released on the 360 at the same time as the PS3 version in the West.

"At E3 2008, during Microsoft's media briefing, it was announced that Final Fantasy XIII would see a multi-platform release on the Xbox 360, which would ship simultaneously with the previously announced PlayStation 3 version in North America and Europe."

Taken from Wikipedia, which in turn was taken from an IGN article. To say that that isn't damaging to the PS3 in the west is called being blind.

[SuperNintendoFreak]

I already said that Nook, although it was in a different way. To say a FF game will stall or kill the PS3 is blind..I think you forgot that the PS3 has FFXIII+FFvXIII. For the complete FF experience, you'll still need the PS3. Even if you don't want the complete FF experience, the PS3 still has ANOTHER FFXIII game coming, along with other exclusive JRPGS and big 1st party game support in 2009. At the end of the day, FFXIII isn't going to help anyone. The first party/second party exclusives should help people decide. And IMO, PS3 pretty much has the 360 beat there.

[Nook29]

Your missing the point entirely. FFXIII was hailed as one of PS3's big hitters, along side Metal Gear. The game will not only sell like crazy, but sell a lot of consoles. This is great for Sony, who are behind in sales because of entering the next generation later, and because of Microsoft having big hitters by now.

The mass market, who want to buy FFXIII, will buy a 360 over a PS3, assuming they haven't got one. The majority who buy the game won't be a big JRPG fan, nor will they care about VS. They will want the game, on a cheaper console, with generally better games.

I readily admit, FF fans and JRPG fans will buy the PS3 anyway, but the majority will get it on 360. This will become apparent when it's released and the first weeks sales data is released. From a pure sales point of view, the 360 will beat the PS3 here. It will AT LEAST stall the PS3, you can't argue that. It won't kill it, as I've said, but how anyone can say the PS3 will still beat the 360 on sales this gen are either seeing into the future or insane.

This isn't about which console is better, which version will be better, or any form of opinion. It is fact/common sense, that the 360 version will sell better.