Why was L.A.I.R not included in this "competition?"

Microsoft signs lot of 3rd party devs for trilogy games. Thats what they do...they don't have as many in studio devs as sony.
Otherwise Too Human may have been hyped but pretty much every preview of the game going 2 years back was shutting the game down and saying how its horrible.

As far as Haze, I had a ps3 when the game came out and I got the demo. I see how this potentially looked like a cool game to the previewers. It would have worked had it been done cell shaded style with humor and some gameplay tweaks. I beleve there was far more positive press about haze than too human.

Well since you digress about Haze, let me offer my experience with Too Human.

Too Human is a very fun and addictive game... for the first 20 hours. I had a lot of fun building up my character with better and better loot and really enjoyed playing co-op with fellow VGCers. The story was good but executed badly.

However, I dont regret paying for Too Human at all and would gladly put my money down for Too Human 2 just to see where the story goes (the ending was good) and I think SK have really found a new way forward for action third person combat with the Right Analog Stick. Its almost painful now to go back to button mashing (exacerbated by the fact that I tried the Star Wars TFU demo straight after and having to button mash while holding three different buttons together to execute the various Force powers).

But the end game of Too Human suffers because I have played the same levels and same enemies over my 4-5 playthroughs and its starting to get very monotonous. However, some would even argue at this point to play other classes and the harder Achievements, but I admit I have loss the fun factor already. If this game had more enemies, more levels and a more MMO style, it would have been one of the top games of the year imho.

In regards to which one will win, I just hope TH sells enough to warrant a sequel, because even the damndest reviews are hoping for a better sequel. And the Metacritic average have been skewed by hate towards Denis Dyack and SK (just go read the 1/5 Destructoid review).

Exactly.  MS signs a lot of 3rd parties for trilogy games, and would you not agree that those games are hyped?  Only when they turn out bad somehow they're "not hyped".  This is what happens when hyped games go down, suddenly they weren't hyped.  I won't lie, Haze was hyped.  It was.  But to say that Too Human wasn't is stupidly stupid.

I like the Too Human wasn't hyped strategy. Please explain how Too Human had 1 million preoders without any hype. It was a game that had tremendous hype, received very poor reviews, and is not selling well.

A buddy of mine recently told me a story about him being taken on a tour of some crazy guy's kuso-ge collection.  Sounded awesome!

I bet Haze is hilarious doing online co-op under the influence with a bunch of your friends...

No, everyone is denying the 1 million pre-orders now.

Pre-launch it had to be true, but now it must be a lie.

At least Haze didn't have 1 million pre-orders.

You should know by now - it's supply constraint!

2. If you look closely at the metacritic score, you would see that the highest score for Haze was a 79. Everything else was 71 and below. Too Human has good (18 reviews 90-76), mediocre (32 reviews 74-60) and bad (13 reviews 58-20) scores.

3. Too Human did actually good in Japan (just look at God of War or anything comparable) and good in NA. Only the Others sales were bad. Both had the same percental drop in NA and of course Haze has a small advantage because it's a shooter.

They both bombed pretty hard, so it's difficult to say. Considering how hyped all the Sony fans apparently were for Too Human, I guess it's the bigger bomb.