By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Personally i thought it was "OK". Not great, not bad.

The important thing i got from it was that Microsoft have now broken down their "hardcore gamer" tag in favour of "games are for everyone".

Which naturally annoys me because i am a hardcore gamer, i love games! But i realise for the industry to keep growing it has to follow Nintendo's break throughs with the casual market. If more people play games then that is a good thing for all of us.

So the show itself was very much set in this vein. Trying to wow those who are not interested in gun games with blood etc.. I was sat with my gf watching it and when the hardcore stuff came on i was like wow, Reach looks amazing, Rising looked awesome, new Crytek game looked interesting and Gears/Fable looked ok! When the Kinect stuff started i lost interest for large sections of it. But my gf was really excited by it. She is not a gamer at all, she loves dancing and to keep fit. Those two games are going to have massive appeal to the casual market. Reading the media reactions to the show it seems that the casuals seem very happy with what has been shown. And that means Microsoft did what they intended to do. They have now changed the image of their product from the "only nerds play games" image to "anyone can play it, anyone can have fun with it, you don't need to be l33t" type thing. Which means far more people interested in the product which means more $$$, and at the end of the day that is what it is all about.

The format of the show was very different from previous conferences at E3. We didn't have the whole stats/graphs thing we normally get where they talk about how great they are. I am so glad that has gone! They also got rid of talking about the things for long periods, instead actually showing you. WHich if you go back and watch the three conferences from years past it is a big change. The show was entertaining to all groups of people, where as in the past it has probably been aimed more at us lot. So i think it is us who has to now accept games are now for everyone. The day's of hardcore gaming E3 are over. Those people who like what we call shovelware are now watching too, but more importantly are buying!

Those who are complaining about it i bet do not complain when SOny do it later today. Because they will, they are not stupid, they realise Microsoft has now changed it's image to cater more for mass market and Sony will want to do the same.

Kinect itself has huge potential. There is no doubt about that. The whole voice recognition and body scan has always been something in sci fi films, to actually see it working in real life is quite sureal. No longer needing a remote to watch tv is a god send for me. I have a tv remote, a sky remote, a ps3 remote, a 360 remote, surround sound remote, radio remote etc.. Eventually those things will no longer be needed, that is a good thing. It also means i save money on having to buy batteries for them!

The Forza demo shows another side of it's potential. The ability to interact with an enviroment/product in a virtual way. If Microsoft go the 3d route as expected then that will make it a lot more emersive. In a way it makes GT5 outdated already if they are making a game where you are the driver, the camera moves you move, that is a huge leap in interaction.

So i will get one for sure, depending on the price and what comes with it.

The new 360 is nice, a lot better looking in the flesh rather then a picture. It is a pity we will not get it in UK for awhile.

So all in all it was a decent conference but was a conference i expected from Nintendo. Which is sad because it means the E3 we all know and love with it's megatons has probably now gone forever, to cater for the mass market.

I have a feeling this E3 in comparison to those gone by will be rememberd for when Sony and MS joined Nintendo rather then for what was announced. Last year SOny announced very little, it however showed a new console. People on here said it was the best conference that year because of it. MS just did the same thing, but this time it is bad? How does that work?

Anyway i look forward to Nintendo and Sony's conference. I am hoping Sony will announce some more titles that will appeal more to me then MS did.