…That was it?
Net was flaky again tonight so I sat down to watch some TV. Nothing special… just what was on CTV. (Local news, sports, Daily Show) So I was about to turn the TV off when, instead of showing eTalk Daily (think our version of ET/The Insider), they instead decide to show, tape-delayed of course, the Xbox 360 special from MTV tonight.
And after 30 minutes… I was simply sitting there, scratching my head and wondering why Microsoft chose to take out a half-hour commercial for the thing.
Yes, the graphics do look spiffy although I wonder how much of what we saw was in-game footage compared to stuff off workstations. And it’s nice to see Perfect Dark Zero finally getting released, seemingly positioned as the main launch title. Good for Rare. And I like the white look of the console.
But really, it looks more or less like same-old, same-old. Nothing major was really announced in terms of innovation. A lot of the games coming out in December seem to be graphically-superior ports of other console games being released around the same time (Madden 2006, Ghost Recon 3, etc.). I’m not sure how many people are going to be willing to purchase game add-ons/etc. through the Marketplace. And, most importantly, just as the Xbox was viewed by many as an FPS system (which both worked as a turn-on and turn-off), Microsoft decided to show off Perfect Dark Zero on the special.
Congratulations, guys. You learned NOTHING over the last four years.
To summarize everything, the special was OK but nothing that would cause people, fanboys or otherwise, to collectively piss their pants. I think. I’m sure there’s some fanboys who did so when the first picture was shown. 
But I’ll be waiting, with a little more anticipation, for the huge guaranteed circus that is E3 next week. 
Saturday, May 13th, 2006 @ 7:39 pm
slider cell phones…
slider cell phones…