It May Even Be In Our Time

I’m going to talk about the E3 conferences in order, starting with Microsoft today, Nintendo tomorrow and Sony the day after. I have good and bad things to say about each, and will be doing it in short blurbs.

The Good: Microsoft has things lined up for the future. Good–there’s a world outside Halo 3.

They’re changing their interface to look like Windows Media Center (which I have always hated… but it works similar to Sony’s XMB, so what do you do?) and they’re adding Avatars, which are like an answer to PS3’s Home avatars and Nintendo’s Miis, only resembling Miis a great deal more.

They’ve also got a good lineup of games, including Fable 2 of Peter Molyneaux fame and every other multiplatform game we already know about like Resident Evil and Rock Band 2. Exclusively, they have Gears of War 2 and a few Square-Enix-published games.

The Bad: I was no excited by Avatars at all. While I appreciate companies trying to represent players in a virtual environment and I’m looking forward to Home and everything, I’m starting to become frustrated that it’s becoming a gimmick to incorporate avatar representation. Hopefully Microsoft Avatars will be just as customizeable as Home avatars and will not be as static and bland as Miis have turned out to be.

I didn’t fail to notice the fact that they only had really two big-name exclusives on their lineup. Of the four Square games Microsoft boasted, only two (Star Ocean: The Last Hope and Infinite Undiscovery) will be exclusive–the other two being Last Remnant and Final Fantasy XIII–the latter announcement which I already expressed my disappointment in. Both exclusive games are only published by Square Enix, developed by tri-Ace.

Also, I feel this being more or less a confirmation of Microsoft’s less-than-honorable payoff to Square. It also details some of Sony’s sneak tactics, which I’ll elaborate on the day after tomorrow.

Lastly, why did they change their interface? I never thought there was an issue with it. I remember actual complaints about the PSN store being the reason it was changed–and to resemble Wii Channels, no less–but giving the Xbox that WMC XMB new interface is rather uncalled for.

Nintendo’s Good and Bad coming tomorrow.