Microsoft CES Keynote Gaming Highlights
Tonight’s Microsoft keynote live from CES started out rough and didn’t end much better than it began. A power outage caused the feed to run 30 minutes late, and featured two 3 minute time wasting videos featuring Seth Meyers (SNL’s Weekend Update). The stream was also plagued with audio issues.
After hocking various computers from makers like Sony, Asus, and Lenovo, braving the “student role-play” as we got a tech demo on Media Room features for Media Center users, Robbie Bach entered the stage to bring in the big finish….. Right?
Mr. Bach started off with reminding us that Mass Effect 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction are coming to the 360 in the next two months. He confirmed two content packs for Modern Warfare 2 that will be exclusive to Xbox 360, as well as confirming that Fable 3, Crackdown 2 and Alan Wake will be in our homes by Holiday 2010. He also restated that Project Natal will also be available and will work with existing 360 units when it too comes home Holiday 2010.
Game Room was also formally announced. It will feature over 30 original arcade classics from Atari, Intellivision, etc, and is due to arrive in Spring 2010. It was not mentioned if this will be free to Gold members or if there will be an additional cost. You will be able to invite friends into your game room and play against each other. Also, if you purchase the game on your 360, it will also be available to you on your PC, achievements and leaderboards in tact.
Other worthy facts: there are over 5 million copies of the Halo novels in print, Christmas week saw 2.2 million users (1 new user per second) on Xbox Live, 10 million members using their 360s to log into Twitter and Facebook, and over 100 million songs downloaded for music games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
Two major disappointments were blackouts to the live stream for the Halo: Reach and Game Room demos. MajorNelson was not aware that the Reach and Natal videos were to be blacked out, and has said via his Twitter stream that he will be talking to people on behalf of the gamers. He did promise that there will be footage of Game Room on Inside Xbox later tonight.
EDIT: Check out the Game Room demo here.
EDIT 2: And a link to the Halo: Reach demo.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=b5abecd1-afcb-4c20-ae7e-633c28f99433)
Popularity: 1% [?]
Related Posts
anyone having any FFXIII parties. 
2 Comments
ugh the demos use Silverlight. Which I don’t have installed on my machine. Thank you so much for covering the stream. I heard it was not pleasant. I agree with you that most of the stuff they really announced already and the Game room is really the only semi-interesting thing announced. But I believe game companies are still trying to find their way at CES. Unless Natal is there for people to play with, it doesn’t sound like Microsoft brought anything exciting, gaming-wise, to CES.
The first half of the keynote was like walking into a Best Buy and watching 2 sales people tell you you should go to the competition because their product is better (when talking about the desktops & notebooks), followed by a look at the “new” version of Media Center and Zune HD.