E3 2012: Micrsoft's Media Fest

So as you may know, E3 2012 happened this week which is typically the place where games journalists die of exhaustion and wait in many lines. Oh and there's new games there too. In general this year felt like they threw a few bones for the next year to extend this generation a bit but it seems like the big devs are hidden away working on secret stuff for Durango (the next Xbox) and Orbis (the next Playstion). Although there were a few gems this year so I'll break it down by the conferences seeing as i ended up watching 4/6 major conferences. I was prompted to write this due to the large amount of E3 podcast's I've been listening to (in fact I was just listening to the Giant Bombcast).

E3 2012: Micrsoft's Gaming Media Fest

So E3's barrage of conference's started a day before E3 as per normal and it started out with some pretty decent Halo 4 coverage and it dropped in quality quite far. I found it interesting that Microsoft just showed trailers for there big titles such as Gears of War: Judgement (which is a prequel, note how they dont want to continue the main story?) and Forza Horizon which are there two major exclusives but instead they spent about 10 minutes on Tomb Raider which looked amazing. They also spent a long time on Resident Evil 6 and that looked quite disappointing as its back to the usual explosions and action thats just an imitation of western games even with Leon who's meant to be the slow paced one. And of course they spent a lot of time on a sports app thats only applicable in America and a lot of time on international languages which didnt seem to show any improvements in Kinect's voice recognition just the same actions in a different language. They also showed short trailers for there Arcade games which are normally really good but i feel they missed the opportunity to show those off. Although my Personal highlight was when the creators of South Park (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) came onstage to talk about the new South Park game which was pretty funny and definitely worth a watch. 

What seemed to be the biggest thing at the conference was the new Xbox Smart Glass and Xbox Music. Smart Glass seems to be a really interesting idea as its a second screen, much like the Wii U, where you can unlock content as you play or even use it as a larger mini map. They also demonstrated it being used alongside an episode of Game Of Thrones where it was showing where the characters are currently as well as some information on the characters which seems very handy. On the Bombcast, Michael Pachter seemed to have the impression that this will mainly be used for Entertainment and I could see this happening. I was pleasantly surprised that Smart Glass will be available on Android, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and iOS devices which is pretty significant to Microsoft. Also they showed off the rebranded Zune Pass service; Xbox Music. This seems to be a Spotify like product but only for Microsoft products which is instantly a turn off for many people including me which is a shame because the Zune software was incredibly good. I feel they could have gotten some traction if they brought it to Android and iOS. At least Sony's service is available on some android devices.

I should say props to Microsoft for not having a fake family on stage and showing off a terrible Kinnect game for once which made this conference better than last years but still the worst of them all. I feel the presenters were heavily scripted and wooden. The only time it didnt seem wooden and scripted is when the creators of South Park came on and ripped on Smart Glass which showed that they were clearly unscripted and just being honest and relaxed. I much prefer a bit of improv or just a bit more a natural delivery than the always on point scripted E3 we normally get. Oh and they ended the conference with generic shooter ops 2 aka black ops 2. (I genuinely forgot to add that in which just shows how impressionable Cod Blops is on me.)