Meh. They figured that casual crowd has more money than cheap ass gamer and they are going after them.

Why did yo uclose the poll?

Actually the smartglass app makes the main concept of the Wii U redundant before even releasing. So that was a win for MS and a pretty big one.

I liked:

• Halo 4
• Tomb Raider
• Forza Horizon
• Resident Evil 6 DLC
• Splinter Cell Blacklist (Kinect integration looks fantastic)
• Gears of War: Judgement

I disliked

• Usher (what a poor performance that was!)
• Xbox Music (I doubt they will have underground German rap music available at launch)

I need to see more of

• Twisted Pixels new game
• signal studios new game
• Fable Journey
• Southpark game
• Ascend: New Gods
• Nike+ training

great from a business perspective, a total failure for a lot of hardcoregamers.

It's a solid B.

They catered to all their fans with every primary franchise represented in Halo 4, Forza, Gears, Fable. They added function and capability to consoles that are 7 years old. The average user is using their console 84 hours a month and indeed uses apps and non-gaming content for a good chunk of that time. Since they added the new entertainment apps in December, Live usage is up 30% year over year and entertainment app usage has doubled. To just downplay that functionality as pointless is to show your ignorance of the console business. People accustomed to using their Xbox in every facet of their entertainment are way more likely to buy the NeXtbox. Halo/Gears fans are gonna buy it anyway. They're locking in everyone else so that the platform succeeds.

The tablet/phone integration is a MUCH bigger deal than you guys are giving them credit for. You want to fully connect with your PS3? You MUST buy a Vita. You want to fully integrate with your WiiU? You MUST use the proprietary and tethered tablet controller. Here, you use your iPad or Android phone or Windows device. The fact that they opened up to iOS and Android is HUGE for MS to expand the reach of the Xbox brand.

Yes YOU may not care about Nike+, but Nike+ has millions of weekly users. 360 has pushed over 6 million combined sales of fitness games in the last two years. It's not an insignificant partnership.

Yes it's not an A+ amaze-balls conference. It's the last year of the console cycle for them. And they have one platform, versus Sony and Nintendo having two each. The D's and F's are just people following the herd because it's somehow cool to be a hater and/or just playing Sony/Nintendo Defense Force.


E3 2012 is NOT about locking in hardcore users, except for Nintendo who is trying to recover their foothold there. It's about expanding brands while maintaining the base. Serving up all your core franchises does the latter. Everything else does the former. NEXT year is all about getting the hardcore to switch to the next gen. And you'll see changes.

I always think Microsoft's conferences have structure, SONY's definitely don't, hopefully they can change that today.

As for Tomb Raider, it just had way too much action in it, the gameplay seemed awkward and it is far too gritty. I prefer the Tomb Raider that was actually set in Tombs. The gameplay shown at E3 last year seemed great.

it was an improvement over last year but thats not saying much. it gets a D from me. No real suprises and most of the games they had ppl were expecting and were mostly 3rd party games barely any exclusives.

D

Smartglass was under the radar, we will know more later on in the year. Pretty much everything else was underwhelming. The first 15 minutes was fine, but went downhill from there.

Meh.

SmartGlass is an fascinating concept. It will be interesting to see where they take it.

I cannot vote :(