Two thoughts:

1) Judging press conferences by the number of exclusives that are announced (or only by the ones you think count) is a bit silly. These are all about presentation, nothing more. Which leads to ...

2) Press conferences don't do games justice. I watched some stage demos today for games that impressed me far more than the truncated spectacle used for the press conference.

I give this press conference a B. The more I talk about it, the better I feel because they did show a lot. Just didn't really wow.

OT: Sony gets a B+, if only for the surprising price of the PSV.

What letter grade would you give the PS3, PS Vita and PSP separatly. Notice how I include PSP, it still has announced games releasing this fall (FF Type 0).

As a fan of Halo I can't tell you how excited I am for a new Halo trilogy with the return of Master Chief and Cortana. Both Sony and MS had fairly conventional conferences with very few surprises. Sony's 249 Vita got my attention, but so far the E3 moment that made me sit up and say hell yes was Halo 4.

As for Kinect, I would rather have seen Steel Battalion and Blackwater, but Fable looked fun and the Star Wars fan in me wants to at least try Star Wars Kinect.

Same here. What really got me was that the short video took place right after the legendary ending for Halo 3, and the graphics have come a long way since.

Combat Evolved is also huge for me. After Reach I have been really tempted to replay Halo 1, I honestly forgot most of it. It's going to be fun, I hope they expand on a side story somewhere.

no price cut for either MS or Sony.

Too much Kinect in Ms conf for me. However, if I have kids that's between 5-10 yr old, I would seriously consider Kinect if I don't already have Wii. MS is really going all out for the kid market with Kinect. On the other hand, all the core games don't look too hot especially Star Wars Kinect. When I saw the leak last night, I thought it was bad. When I saw the live demo this afternoon, it's even worse. :(

I would have to say the conference was decent. I am far more interested in the composition employed then in the singular announcements that satisfy my wants or desires. Microsoft only had minor pacing issues. They were pretty good about hitting, filling in, and moving on. With a few exceptions. I must concur with others these eight minute play sessions in Call of Duty are plain tedious. They serve no actual function, and are basically filler. The Disney set was also poorly paced. The second playing was redundant. Anyway beyond that they never stayed on one thing long enough for it to become troublesome. They usually pulled everything else off between two or three minutes.

The composition was pretty good. Even though we still saw blocks. The variety in the blocks helped to defuse any doldrums the viewer might have felt. Sadly in the past these events have had ten, fifteen, or thirty minute sections of pure crap. Everyone forgets them when they get dazzled by big announcements, but when a third of a show is just too horrid to watch it is just plain bad entertainment. Nice to see Microsoft trying to hold up its entire show.

The unveils were actually pretty plentiful. They might not have been of high value announcements. Yet there were a lot of them, and that is a pretty good way to give everyone something they want. A nice mix of things isn't a bad thing.

The great thing is that we got less then a couple minutes of data points. That is just fucking fantastic. They were just pure entertainment and information. Really it was middle of the road safe, and for that we gotta say it was just okay. We have seen much worse.

So last year MS announced:
Fable, Forza, Gears, Halo, Codename Kingdoms, Dance Central, Kinect Sports, Star Wars Kinect, Kinect itself and the slim.

This year:

Fable, Forza, Gears, Halo, Ryse, Dance Central, Kinect Sports, Star Wars Kinect, Kinect stuff

No fresh ideas.

Well guess I'll just run it down. I thought from the core side they did have a solid showing. Obviously they were going to show us Modern Warfare 3 and they picked a great level to show. Was a throwback to MW1 where a lot of mix up than the usual running and gunning. Gears 3 obviously looked great and, although surprising, Tomb Raider was a nice touch. However, none of these are new announcements and only Gears is exclusive. For the new announcements, relied mainly on Halo which isn't a bad series to rely on. However, no time was spent on it. A short trailer telling us what comes in Halo CE Anniversary and then just a teaser for Halo 4. The latter was to be expected, but a demo of Halo CE Anniversary was much needed. The game came out a very long time ago and there are a lot of people that own a 360 that have never experienced the first Halo game (or second one for that matter). That would have been a great time to show off the game and what makes Halo... well Halo.

Then we move on to the Kinect side of things. And this is where it got messy for me. First they started to introduce their hybrid titles: Mass Effect 3, Future Soldier, and the sports games. Sports games didn't get any time, but I think most would agree that they will probably benefit from their integration if done well. However, for ME3 and Future Soldier, the implementation was unnecessary and well "gimmicky". ME3's voice commands through Kinect which could easily be implemented through a headset was worthless, and the ability to customize your gun in Future Soldier was handy, but not necessary. None of those implementations make me think the games became "better" due to Kinect being used.

With Kinect only games for the core, Ryse did look quite good but gameplay wasn't really shown. No live demonstration which would have been a good idea. Forza 4 looked good, but needed more shown. Fable: The Journey, though was a surprise in not only the announcement but what they did with it. The large open-world game that relies on choice and decisions, is an on-rails action game. Doubtful this is what fans of the series were looking for. Star Wars Kinect was another technical mess, although still looked cool but I'll make sure to listen to the Admiral. So their attempt at the core is a mixed bag.

Finally, there were a lot of Kinect for the casual and for the most part this was a hit. Dance Central 2, Kinect Sports: Season Two, Kinect Funlabs, Kinect Disneyland, etc. All were great showings, good new features, and were creative. The Disneyland was surprisingly good and definitely one of the more exciting titles for Kinect. Only misfit in all of this was the Sesame Street game. It was misplaced and awkward. Grown men did not want to see this shown off. This was the wrong place to first show this off.

On the Xbox Live side, another solid showing. More Kinect implementation and more deals for more content. Expected but continues there support for their service which is tops.

So overall, it was a mixed bag, but where it counted most they didn't deliver. There wasn't enough new announcements for the core gamers and the announcements they did make left more questions than answers. Their announcements for the casual side was strong though and they did drop the megaton with Halo 4. But a lot of the show was boring and at times downright embarrassing. A lot of things shown that not only made me embarrassed to be watching, but there wasn't a lot shown there that actually made me want to buy and play a Kinect haha.

So as a score, I'd give them a 5/10. Not good but not bad either, just middleground. Although, a lot of that was saved by the Halo 4 announcement, it still did have its good moments. I gave Sony a 7/10, though, so not this year MS for my favorite conference. Although, I will say I enjoyed EA's more than both of these, as Battlefield 3 is still the best game shown off this year at E3. Let us see if Nintendo can top them.

As much as I like the Kinect I didn't need to see stage demos of Dance Central 2 and Kinect Sports 2, although I'll likely be buying both.

I thought the Mass Effect 3 stuff was great though.

Overall the conference was decent, not horrible, not awesome. Although honestly it would have been much better if the majority of it hadn't been leaked beforehand.

This I agree with, and is why I don't like Microsoft too much in general.

However to be fair, there was no Forza last year, and Gears 3 and Star Wars is the same game in both E3's.

Then again are Nintendo and Sony any different? 3DS's 6 big exclusive Mario Kart, Starfox, Zelda, Super MArio, Luigi's Mansion 2, and well Kid Icarus.. For PS Vita Uncharted, Mod Nation, LBP, Hot Shotz Golf, and for PS3 Uncharted, Resistance, InFamous, Starhawk, Sly, another Move game, and another collection of old God of War games.

However Nintendo and Sony have more IP's to fall back on.