E3 2004: Microsoft Media Conference by
Phillip Duff
Thursday, May 13 2004
The master chief gets a date, and XNA news.
The floor may open on a Wednesday but E3 really begins on Monday night with the Microsoft Pre-show. They may only be a couple of years old relative to Nintendo and Sony but Microsoft has developed a competitive showcase with its own American flavor.
As we awaited the show to begin, Microsoft had hors d'vours and drinks prepared for the attendees. Unfortunately, their food selection was not as extravagant as last year's show thus our hope for a free dinner was not to be. Surely with such a lackluster offering they would have bags and/or the much rumored Halo 2 demo to give out at the end of the show... As we found some seats, we noticed that the setting appeared much like the show from two years prior. We almost expected them to offer stale popcorn as they did then. Soon, the theater screen was showing slides much like at the beginning of a movie, slides that poked fun at themselves. After about half an hour of repeated slides, the lights dimmed and the show began. Continuing with the movie theme, we were greeted with trailers for various games they have coming out including Unreal Championship 2, Conker: Live and Reloaded, and the ever popular Shrek 2 video game.
Corporate VP J. Allard was first to come out, pushing both Xbox Live and XNA, the new development frontend Microsoft premiered during GDC. To show their online dominance over Sony, they presented a The Apprentice knock-off bashing the Sony executives and their online strategy featuring Donald Trump, himself (does this guy not make enough money already or what?). This was followed by some new features they will be adding to Xbox Live: voice mail, video chat, and classic arcade games. For his XNA segment, he showed the Crash demo from GDC showing a car crashing into a wall with destructive consequences. Not to simply repeat himself, he followed with an upgraded demo, a demo now featuring two cars crashing into each other (to view the demo, go to http://www.microsoft.com/xna). He then passed the torch to Marketing VP Peter Moore.
Moore's presentation focused on the games Microsoft will be releasing in the months to come. First, he talked about th e game we were all here for, Halo 2. To show it off, two Bungie developers came on stage and described the new features of the game: dual gun wielding, destructible vehicles, vehicle hijacking, and the ability to wield the Covenant energy blade. They closed their presentation with a walkthru of the demo level they would have on the floor. Moore spoke again and gave the announcement: the date Halo 2 will ship. As per the (fake?) tattoo on his arm, November 9 is the date all Halo junkies have been waiting for. With that out of the way, he continued with Dead or Alive Online, Doom 3, Jade Empire, and Forza Motorsport, Microsoft's answer to Sony's Gran Turismo franchise.
Finally, Games VP Robbie Bach took the reigns and announced the big surprise these preshows are designed for, Electronic Arts games on Xbox Live. To emphasize this point, the cover boys for the 2005 line of EA Sports games walked on stage including the greatest himself, Muhammad Ali. Not only will the sports games go online but other titles including Burnout 3, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, and Battlefield 2 will receive the same treatment.
As the show came to a close and we exited, we were disappointedly to find that for the second year straight they did not have a bag to offer. Other than the materialism of a certain journalist, I would say that the show was well done. They did not show any propagandistic numbers or graphs one would expect from press conferences; they just showed the games. And, with all that is coming to the Microsoft console – especially with the removal of their EA bottleneck – there is not much reason not to go out and buy one if you have not already (this coming from a jaded Microsoft software end-user).
