I actually found the beginning of the conference (CoD, Gears, Halo) to be horribly boring. I was hoping they were about to bust out Gears 4p split screen, I guess that was silly of me...

The little girl demo'ing Kinectimals was cute, the Ubisoft game was demo'd nicely, and the slim looks pretty hot. I won't be getting any of these, though (already have 2 360's), so there was really nothing new for me.

I'm still skeptical of Kinect. Even though it looks alright in concept, there's so much that could go wrong when you actually bring it into the living room, I think. It should still do okay if it's reasonably priced ($80 or so), but any more is going to really hurt. Most people already have Wii's, so...

edit: Forgot, the ESPN thing looks like it could be pretty cool for sports fans. Might try it out myself (even though I'm not one)

The casuals will love them. People with families will love them. My wife watched the conference with me. And she is already telling me we are getting Kinect. My 3 year old daughter wants Kinectimals. M$ have achieved exactly what they wanted. Sales. 

I do not expect gamers on the internet to like the 2nd half of the conference. It wasnt aimed at them anyway. M$ will be on alot of TV shows now in the west. And I also think Japan may actually go for this.

well kinect was way better then i expected ... but the name still sounds bad to me... the rest was predictable and slow paced... the way they announce the new console was lame and unexcited, there was no "riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidge raaaacer" shout to wake the sleepy viewers like me! still nothing here that makes me go out and finally buy a xBox 360...

Did anyone else notice no NFL in the ESPN deal plus I bet most of the live games will cost something. That was a pretty big let down for a conference.

Everyone needs to get a bit real about what Microsoft achieved here.

They just came out  and entirely bested  Nintendo on all the "gimmicky" fields of gaming like music, fitness and animal games.  That may be extremely cynical, and an absolutely copy-fest, but they still did it.

They also announced a feature-improved slim, at price parity with a PS3.  You add in all the crazy shit you get through Xbox Live now and that looks very impressive next to a PS3 for the same price with only Blu-Ray as a stand out.

They have the shooters absolutely cocked and locked, those trailers were awesome.  They have an awesome looking RPG in Fable 3, and a new adventure looking game from CRYTEK. 

Then they have Kinect, which looks extremely impressive.  Read what the IGN bloggers were saying about Star Wars.  It looks awesome.  And audio control for everything?  If they advertise this well (and price it half-decently), that is huge.

Was this an absolutely jaw-dropping, mile-a-minute conference? No, it largely did what we expected of it.

And that is to ensure Microsoft is throwing down the gauntlet this holiday season and going for Sony and Nintendo's jugulars.  Not only that, they have just put price pressure on Sony by matching and exceeding most of their features.  Microsoft will be making a motza off that $299 slim.  Reduced components and about $15 extra for internal wi-fi and a bigger HDD?

They have plenty of room to move in the off-season next year.  They could even be looking to move slims at $299 on launch this week then dropping the price in November.  Microsoft have real game right now (no pun intended).

they should have announced the price cut of the other models

This pretty much mirrors Nintendo's conferences everybody hated for the last 2 years. They show off a few hardcore games we already knew about (Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bro. Wii, Metroid Other M vs. Call of Duty, Halo, Metal Gear) then spend the majority of their time with the casual stuff (all of Kinect, vs Wii music, Wii Sports REsort, Wii Fit plus, etc.) Then finish it off with no big surprises. (except other M which noone expected).

Out of all the stuff I have seen with Kinect, I am not impressed. With the Wii /motion plus casual games I can get into them and have some fun. But the tiger demo, the horrible Kart racing game, the sports compilation all looked fairly boring.

I think the show was quite good, and they just mentioned the price drop of Arcade and Elite xbox 360 on GT.

Selling my 360.

It feels redundant to own one now that all the games to be released are sequels or Wii knockoffs.

It was good.

Got progressively worse I must say.

Not as good as their press.c last year, but very good.

Kinect looks like it has potential, a bit of lag but very manageable.

All those Kinect titles stuck imo though.

Only fail part was Kinectimals.

And nice little touches at the end