After all the hoopla surrounding the death and rebirth of the Electronics Entertainment Expo, pulled from Heaven back to Hell on Earth like Buffy in Season 6 (had to put that Whedon reference there), it’s finally here. And after watching Microsoft’s press event last night, I’m betting there are some in Redmond who probably wished it stayed dead after its lethargic spectacle.

• First the obvious: no price drop announced. No MGS4 announced. It’s like opening your presents on Christmas morning and not getting that one gift you wanted above everything else. Disappointing.
• As a matter of fact, there weren’t any major Sony-stealing exclusives announced – no RE5 exclusive. No new franchises from developers loyal to other systems. Nothing.
• Viva Pinata: Party Animals? Could Rare have come up with a worse idea to extend that franchise? How about coming up with some nice downloadable content, say a true multiplayer component, or just patch some of the game’s several shortcomings?
• This year’s event gets the “Deja Vu” award, as in “didn’t they talk about all this stuff last year too?” I never thought I’d say it, but I’m starting to get sick of seeing Jadelicious parade Assassin’s Creed. After all, it’s what, the third year in a row for this title? Same with Mass Effect – we all know it’s coming, we all know it’s going to be good, just put it on the floor and let people play it. I don’t need to have Peter Moore jam it down my throat. And the GTA downloadable content? Sorry guys, we already knew about that.
• The Video Marketplace getting Disney movies? Good. The fact they can only be rented and viewed over a 24 hour period and not purchased? Well that negates the whole deal. Disney fans buying this stuff have no doubt seen them before, and would want to keep their HD purchase. It would have been better if Microsoft talked about integrating the Video Marketplace on Vista and allowing the user to purchase movies and share across MCE devices on a network. But I guess it takes more than me saying it for the past nine months to make people realize it’s a damn good idea.
• Scene-It! = Good idea. Scene-It! as a retail release = Bad idea. This should have been a downloadable title. And we don’t need special controllers for it, that’s just stupid.
• I guess the exclusive Call of Duty beta is a good thing. But it’s only a matter of time, after Shadowrun, Halo 3 and Warhawk, when beta is just another word for “demo” and loses its significance.
• If I were Bungie, I’d be pissed they took my golden child and dropped it in the mud on the way to the auditorium. In other words, they actually made us not care much about Halo 3. Was it was the timing, the oversaturation of all-things Halo at the moment, or just the ho-hum delivery, or a perfect storm of all the above? The live-action trailer looked like a student-made green-screen project that made its way onto the SciFi Channel. Not impressive. And the Halo 3 single-player footage? Well, the graphics sure do look better than we saw in the multiplayer beta, but at this point everyone’s played it, they’ve all pre-ordered it. There’s not much else Microsoft can do to convince people to buy it. Underwhelming.
• I guess that grey Xbox model turned out to be green after all. Even though a special edition Halo 3 console wasn’t previously announced, we all knew it was coming. The fact that it was green generated a collective “who gives a f**k?!?” from the audience. Only the details could have impressed, like if it was an Elite-based console, does it come with any exclusives besides the colored controller, would the Legendary bonus material be pre-loaded, etc. The other thing is, who would be the audience for this? With the original Xbox, $179 could allow someone to afford another console, but at $399+, I don’t see many people picking this up.
• At X06 we got Doom as a surprise XBLA title. This time we get – Sonic and Golden Axe? Oh joy of joys, it’s not like I haven’t played these on every friggin’ Sega collection over the past 10 years. And Sonic was announced by that putz Greg Canessa in early 2006, so the news was a little anti-climactic. Why not put Marathon out now, to ride the tide until Halo 3 is released? What’s the matter, Microsoft – afraid it would take away your Shadowrun audience?
• Another note about XBLA: 2007 is the year of the casual gamer, so why didn’t Microsoft announce some casual game line via XBLA? Scene-It! would have been a great start. Some suggestions – a partnership with Milton Bradley or an exclusive deal with PopCap; Peggle or Diner Dash on XBLA would have been nice. So would have Life, Monopoly, or Chutes and Ladders for the kiddies. Microsoft had the opportunity to mount a two-front attack on Sony and Nintendo and let it slip through their fingers.
• I thought it was weird Microsoft didn’t deliver a unified message. For example, the Xbox 360 Messenger Kit was announced via press releases, but nothing was mentioned of it during the event. Same with the new colors for wireless controllers.
• Probably the most impressive of the show was the Games for Windows push, especially since now I have a nice new PC able to handle these not-so-friendly system requirements. Gears of War PC? Yes we all figured it was coming, but it was nice to see it running smooth and high-res. With a level editor, no less – the Unreal Mod community will have a field day with this one. And kudos to Microsoft for making it run on both XP and Vista. One more good move – I think Viva Pinata will have longer legs on the PC than it did on the 360. Call me crazy, but I have a hunch the PC platform is a better fit for it.

As the latest internet craze is giving the press events grade scales, I say the Microsoft event was a solid C. I understand it was emphasizing their stellar lineup of 2007 releases, but people don’t go to these events to see stuff they’re going to be playing in a couple of months; they want to see the long-term plan, to get a comfort level the console they will be buying will hold up over the next couple of years. To be honest, I didn’t get that at all from Microsoft. E3 reaches well beyond the hardcore gamer now, with coverage from major media outlets and live feeds everywhere, and if I were an average Joe I wouldn’t have a clue what Microsoft had in store for 2008.

I now believe this E3 will belong to Sony. They could show the status quo and still come out ahead – they won momentum with the price cut announcement earlier in the week, and they have the most room to grow with first-party releases, online network functionality, and interoperability with the PSP.

Check back later for more E3 thoughts.