E3 2010 Day 1

While the floor show doesn't start until tomorrow some of the press conferences take place on the day before. As usual first up is the Microsoft briefing. Now this is nearly always focused on the Xbox 360 rather than any PC related things and this year was no exception.Nearly three quarters of the briefing was related to the new Kinect system (formally Project Natal), Microsoft's new controller free motion control system. The whole concept of the system is interesting but the games they're demoing for it seem awfully underwhemling. It looks great for controlling the menu system or playing films and music but the games need a lot more work. The one thing that did look good was Forza Motorsport. I'm not usually a big racing game fan but this looked good with the Kinect system tracking your head movements allowing you to actually look around through the windscreen by moving your head. They did have some standard games on show including Gears of War 3 and Metal Gear Solid: Rising but they were not titles I'm really interested in and they where all known, no major surprises here. The new slim version of the 360 does look very nice. It's probably about time I got one for myself. Overall not the best start ever Microsoft seemed to be lacking new things to announce which is a shame because they usually but on the flashiest show. Next up is EA hopefully that will be better, they'll at least be the most likely to show more PC titles.

With the exception of the EA sports section the EA conference was much more interesting. I'm not bothered by MMA or NFL so that's a dull part for me but it's to be expected from EA. They started with Need for Speed and Medal of Honour, both of which looked great, but again that's a racer and a shooter so not really my thing. Also announced was the EA Gun Club some kind of reward club offering bonuses for playing EA games. I'm not sure how useful that will be, it doesn't look that great. I guess they're using as a way to discourage piracy. Sims on consoles, not bothered about that either but I guess it's fair to say that lot of people out there will be. Now EA Partners this is the exciting part, the games from other developer where EA just acts as publisher. Crysis 2 looks like it could be good but the guy playing it didn't seem to be very good so we got lots of shots of of walls. Bulletstorm from Epic Games looks like it would be fun in a crazy over the top way, but some of the events seems a bit scripted and the tough guy duo characters make it feel similar to Gears of War (also from Epic). Isn't it about time for a new Unreal Tournament? Now the big one, Star Wars: The Old Republic. We'll get our own spaceship as a base of operations, that's cool, I wonder how many will be called M1ll3n1um Falc0n? There's another awesome pre-rendered trailer but still very little game play revealed.

Next up is Ubisoft but that will be past midnight in UK time so I'll write about that one tomorrow.