E3: Microsoft Press Conference - X-Box One

The Microsoft Press Conference at E3 in Los Angeles, CA

E3 has kicked off in Los Angeles, CA, and for those who know me know that E3 is tied with Shark Week for my favorite week of the year. Normally I just watch the Nintendo Press Conference and highlights, but this year I was interested to see what the other companies had to offer. So today, like many other gamers across the country, I tuned my TV to Spike and watched the Microsoft Press Conference and I....was underwhelmed.

Call me a Nintendo fan boy, call me poor. Call me whatever you like, but I wasn’t totally impressed with the X-Box One’s line up. Let’s take the most critical issue at the moment: The price point. Consoles and games need to be affordable. They need to be accessible to the masses. PC gaming lives on because there is a large market of people who buy and build computers centered around running games. Consoles live on because they offer a small, convenient device to be an all around media machine. Families who want to stream Netflix, Hulu Plus, browse the Internet, and check their email in addition to playing games are looking to consoles to solve that problem.

So the X-Box One was announced at $499.99, and I personally don’t see how Microsoft thinks they can get away with that. In my home state of Massachusetts, given sales tax, this will bring the console to approximately $543.75. The last time I spent this much money on a device was...the computer that I built. Nothing else came close - My television, Wii, Monitors, Apple TV, surround sound, etc. all cheaper. When the Playstation 3 came out originally, it was priced at $599.99, but that system featured Blu-Ray technology that was in it's infancy at the time of launch (A Blu-Ray Player alone back then was between $300 and $400). And when Apple launched their iPad it was around this price and people bought that, but an iPad is a portable, all around useful device. So what is an appropriate price for a console? In my opinion, appropriate pricing should stay within the $300 to $400 range and come down after a year or two. The Wii U followed this model and is priced great, even if sales aren’t doing too well at the moment. We’ll have to wait until Sony announces their price for the PS4 to see where the X-Box One stands.

The X-Box One is allowing players to more easily record and share their gameplay, allowing for the possibility of music videos, real-time walkthroughs, and memes. Though this will make the sharing of digital media even easier, it’s something that people have been doing without the integrated technology for years.

Now for the most important issue: The games. Though I wasn’t totally blown away by the line up they showed, there are two that stuck out for me. One was Capcom’s newest development, “Dead Rising 3”, which sets you in an open, sandbox esque city during a zombie apocalypse. The game allows you to use almost anything as a weapon, and the hordes that attack you are far vaster than anything seen in previous zombie games like “Left 4 Dead” or “Resident Evil”. Click here for the gameplay footage that was shown at E3. 

Dead Rising 3, looks to be a promising survival-horror game

The second game that I thought looked cool is “Project Spark”, a game that allows you to control and build your environment - Anything from the arctic to a tropical forest, and then once you’ve selected that you can model the terrain anyway you like. Once the gameplay starts, the different characters have different abilities, including controlling your environment. The gameplay they showed looked pretty cool and unique. This is the gameplay footage they showed.

Our first look at "Project Spark" what looks to be a fun and creative game

A major problem I had with the press conference is when they announced “Minecraft” for the X-Box One. It doesn’t bother me that it’s being released for it, as “Minecraft” has been on the X-Box 360. But I have an issue with the fact that when it was announced at the press conference, Microsoft made it appear as if it were a Microsoft original. They made no mention to the fact that the game started on PC, migrated to Mac, and then once it became a huge hit on those systems came over to the 360. They didn’t mention the chief developer, Mojang, and they went as far as to say “Bigger worlds” in the trailer. Even if they could make the worlds of “Minecraft” bigger, would it really matter? “Minecraft” is viewed to be infinite, which isn’t technically true, but the surface area of the discoverable world is estimated to be approximately six times larger than the surface area of the Earth. This is why there are videos online of people building trains that span for 250,000 meters, or approximately 155.3 miles,  like this one here. Or people building entire cities, like the ones featured in this video.

Then there’s the fact that the X-Box One will have the Kinect always on, always connected to the Internet, and always watching you. If this weren’t creepy enough, Microsoft is advertising that many of their games “learn” your gaming habits to be better competitors. If Skynet hasn’t started to plan their overthrow of the human race yet, this could be where it begins. 

The X-Box One. Though performance is key, aesthetics are important as well - And in my opinion this looks like a large VCR.

Overall I was unimpressed with the reveal, but I’m not a Microsoft fanboy. I’m sure there are plenty of hardcore X-Box fans who can’t wait for the console to come out, and that’s okay. I’m certainly not objective in this point of view, no gamer truly is. We all form allegiances early on to developers or companies and mine has always been to Nintendo and Steam. I recognize a great game when I see it, like I mentioned earlier, but this console will not be one that I’ll be purchasing.