I watched the livestream, and the presentation was awful. A bunch of suits spouting corporate bullshit and desperately trying to engage with "da yoof" by constantly name-dropping things they'd heard of.
"You can see here I've been listening to some Deadmau5."
"I like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones."
Etc, etc. Patronising arses.
First they talked about TV, and all the ways to watch TV, etc, etc. They seemed to have some kind of obsession with sports and Then they rabbited on about the hardware. Finally, after half an hour they decided to talk games, and what was the first thing they did? They announced a partnership with EA! Of all the people you bring to a product launch, you bring the most hated company in America??
EA announced more EA sports titles, and we were all supposed to care. Microsoft talked Forza, Halo, Call of Duty, and I nearly fell asleep. CoD looked excellent on a technical level, but then CoD is always excellent in some respect. The storyline looked like bollocks though.
Here's a thing to ask yourself: Was there a single second of actual gameplay footage anywhere in that 90 minute presentation? Anywhere? Call of Duty came bloody close, and I thought for a second I actually saw some, then I realised there was no HUD. Every single thing relating to games was pre-rendered, and I'm certain that the stuff on the big screen was simulated, even the Skype call (seriously, you didn't notice the perfect timing and scripted lines?). We haven't seen this thing in action, at all.
It was a bloody disgrace. The machine looks OK as a set top box, but as a console I saw no reason to buy it when the PS4 presentation did a far better job of positioning the machine as a games machine, which it is. The PS4 presentation basically went through a list of every single one of the PS3's flaws and said how they would be fixed, which is how you bloody do it! The Microsoft guys were almost embarrassed to admit it was a games machine.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
