Microsoft's E3 Conference Displays Company Confidence

The tone from Microsoft tonight was one of celebration and anticipation, as they ran down their successes since the 360 launched and hyped their lineup between now and the end of the year. Peter Moore framed the discussing by recalling the blockbuster holiday season of 2004, which was driven by the Grand Theft Auto, Madden, and Halo franchises. Moore stated that 'the only place to play all three games' this year is the 360. In addition to showing off other heavyweight titles like Mass Effect (which is due in November), the company had a few new announcements: They'll be releasing a version of the movie trivia game Scene-It with a quartet of special controllers, for a standard game price. They've partnered with Walt Disney and its associated companies to bring their family of movies to the Xbox Live service, with many titles already available tonight. CliffyB officially revealed Gears of War for the PC; it'll have additional content as well as co-op gaming via Live for Windows. Resident Evil 5 will be coming to the system (the only game from their conference not releasing this year). The event was capped by a live-action short piece meant to show what a Halo movie might look like, the announcement of a Halo 3 special edition 360 sku set to launch alongside the game, and a new trailer showing a bunch of Halo 3 in-game footage. For further details on the event, click below for other sites' liveblog coverage.

The new E3

[dunezone]

I think Microsoft did an excellent job of showcasing what the new e3 is about. They presented themselves like they would to shareholders in a company. They talked about the current market and how they are standing up to the competition. (And when they showed the numbers they showed Nintendo right behind them and didnt hide it) They showed off their exclusive titles, new services to xbox live, and of course they showed us game play of new titles.

This is the new E3, no more crowded booths, no more distractions with booth babes, crazy music, and all that jazz. This is about showing off what you got against the competition.

Re:Did somebody say 'movie'?

[Osty]

After the cinematic masterpiece that was DooM, I just can't wait for the Halo movie.

Haven't you heard? The Halo movie was put on indefinite hold a while back. That said, it looks like they still have Neill Blomkamp [imdb.com] in their corner, judging by the short they showed tonight. If you haven't already, you should check out some of his stuff [youtube.com], especially Alive in Joburg [youtube.com]. He's a very talented director and cinematographer, and many people were excited to hear that he was going to helm the Halo movie. On top of that, IMDB currently lists Alex Garland (28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later) as the writer for the Halo movie, which shows promise. And finally, Bungie has a huge bible of Halo lore that they use for the games and books, which gives the Halo movie a fighting chance compared to Doom (which only had a story in order to justify why you were hunting for keys and killing demons). If they ever decide to go forward with the movie, I'll be cautiously excited.

I hope they release it in blu-ray or HD-DVD, so I can watch it in all its HighDef glory.

But Blu-Ray is Sony! Eww! Obviously they'll release it as an HD download on Xbox Live instead. :)

Re:Celebrating their monopoly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Here you are totally off-base. For one thing -- Bungee is Microsoft. Halo is a Microsoft product. I assumed everyone on the planet knew that game was made by microsoft given that it has only ever lived on XBOX consoles. As for the hardware being overpriced, I have to disagree -- especially considering the fact that the original XBOX was such a huge loss due to people modding them as cheap pcs. And considering the time and effort put into improving the "security" of the XBOX2 you can bet that they aren't making a profit off the hardware.

As for the "monopoly" -- I think you may want to look that word up. There is no monopoly in the console platform industry. There are obviously 3 major competitors with reasonable market share competing quite vigorously in that market.

In general, you must recognize that console platforms do not make money from sales. They make money from liscences sold. A console platform sells N consoles at a loss, then they recoup that loss based on liscences sold to game developers to release their games on the console. This is where hype and bullshit deeply scar companies. If a console is hyped hard enough, game manufacturers will buy liscences for it. Even if everyone on the planet had a dreamcast today, a software vendor won't buy a liscence for it because there is no hype around the console, and the sense is that the effort and fees would just go down the toilet. The whole market is speculative, and no Microsoft does not instantly get a monopoly on everything it touches for free including console platforms despite popular belief.

Re:profit

[sesshomaru]

"During this period, CD-ROM had been pioneered by Sony. Nintendo saw this opportunity and, along with Sony, began development on a CD-ROM drive for the SNES. Drawing on their clever naming skills, the 'Super Disc' would play Nintendo cartridge games and compact discs. But what Nintendo overlooked was that Sony would be deemed the "sole worldwide licenser" of this CD technology, according to the contract." [8bitjoystick.com]

Not only on Windows

[dharbee]

"Though they had to be running Windows"

Come on man, you knew this, but in case you didn't

http://www.amazon.com/Macsoft-Halo-Mac/dp/B00006IQ TH [amazon.com]
http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2003/11/halo/ [apple.com]

Re: Sony cut the price of the PS3 ?

[trdrstv]

Nobody's expecting Nintendo to cut the price of the Wii to $200. Why should Microsoft cut the price of the 360 just because Sony did so with the PS3?

Wait... Sony dropped the price of the PS3? At launch you could get one for $499 or $599, now on Amazon I see them listed for $499 and $599... Did they introduce a new SKU for $449 or $399 and I'm not seeing it?

Only in /.

[jotaeleemeese]

Such an idiotic comment could be uttered.

Check MS stock performance:

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=MSFT [google.com] (check Max).

That is a steady state system curve for you. This means the company has matured and is not finding anything innovative.

Look how an innovative company looks:

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=GOOG [google.com]

the exponential curve shows that people perceive value in the company.

Simply put, MS is stagnated, I am sure institutional investors are losing patience, wasting 5 billion chasing a chimera does not sound like a good choice, and the markets are saying as much.

Re:Call of Duty

[badasscat]

Remember last years Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo hoopla from Sony or how about Nintendo's demo with Mario 128 and the realistic Zelda several years ago.

Nintendo never showed a demo of "Mario 128", as in the game. I was at the press conference when they initially unveiled this - I believe it was actually at Space World, not E3. What they showed then was a demo called "128 Marios", *not* "Mario 128". This was only changed to "Mario 128" later. (There is a photo of the original title screen that got changed for later demos floating around the net somewhere, though I can't find it at the moment.) It was always a simple tech demo designed to show that the GameCube was capable of handling 128 N64-quality Marios at the same time without slowdown. There was no game there. It was just a bunch of Marios on a platform in space.

Later, Miyamoto started saying in interviews that he was thinking of ways to turn "Mario 128" into a game. But no game was ever shown, and I don't believe any actual coding was done. Somehow, at some point the press and bloggers turned things around and got the idea retroactively that the tech demo that was shown was footage from a game that was never released. It wasn't. Any ideas Miyamoto did have were no doubt put into Mario Sunshine and Mario Galaxy.