Microsoft’s E3 press conference just ended, and, well, there were no huge announcements to make (including no price drop on the 360). Gameplay footage was shown for Halo 3, and live gameplay demos were shown for Assassin’s Creed (which actually looks pretty cool, but from what I’ve seen here I can’t believe it’s ready for November 07), and Call of Duty 4 (looks like another Call of Duty game, but in modern times – wow nobody has done that before!)
The same GTA4 trailer we’ve seen before was shown, but after that they announced that XBOX 360 would get at least 2 extra episodes of downloadable content that the PS3 won’t. Hope they’ll be worth the $50 Million Microsoft paid for them!
The real highlights of the conference for me were two blurbs about Gears of War for Windows. First: It will include some new content (they didn’t say exclusive, so it will probably be downloadable for the 360). This includes another boss battle that lead designer Cliff Bleszinski demoed live in co-op mode
Second: Before he left the stage, Cliff blurbed that you will be able to play GoW on “Vista and XP”. Just a quick blurb, like they tried to sneak it in there only for those who were looking for it. I know this will make quite a few people happy, as those with dedicated gaming PC’s are reluctant to move to Vista because of poorer performance in most games.
Aside from those highlights, and Microsoft’s entry into the ‘family gaming’ scene with the former DVD boardgame “Scene It?” (which includes 4 of the ugliest controllers I’ve ever seen).
Oh, and speaking of ugly, who the hell is going to buy that Halo 3 Edition XBOX 360? Seriously now…
Another huge announcement is the availability of many movies from Disney’s library on XBOX Marketplace, both in HD and SD. Oh, and XBOX Marketplace is finally going to become available in Canada and Europe.
[...] people put 2-and-2 together when they heard that Gears of War will definitely run on Windows XP, and figured that Games for Windows LIVE for XP would be forthcoming as [...]