E3 2008 Wrap Up part 1

E3 has concluded and I personally declare that Microsoft is the proverbial "winner". With the huge netflix/360 bombshell (Jeremy's take on it here) that they dropped lets look through the ashes at what else was announced. First off Gears 2 single player was finally revealed and damn does it look sweet. All the new enemy types and weapons look jaw dropping. This is definitely gonna be the game of the fall and a strong contender for game of the year. More Halo Wars footage was shown and it was revealed the covenant would be playable (duh!). Fable 2 is going to have co-op and it will be released in October. Left 4 Dead showed some new character models. And the two kick in the nuts for Sony is: 1. FallOut 3 will have exclusive dlc for the Xbox 360 and 2. Final Fantasy XIII will also be released on Xbox 360. Sony responded by saying they were "disappointed" with Square's decision. For me personally the best thing I heard besides the Xbox 360/Netflix streaming capability was that there is going to be a Xbox Live Primetime channel where you can play arcade games such as 1 vs 100 and win actual prizes. If this catches on this could be huge. I think im in the minority but I actually preferred the new Xbox 360 dashboard update look. Also Portal 2 was announced and Geometry Wars 2 was shown and it looks awesome. Im also stoked for the galaga remix arcade update.

For Sony the only interesting thing I saw was the 80 gig model will replace the 40 gig model and be priced at 399 this fall. Also they have now launched their Movie service which is about 2 years behind Xbox. They showed footage of Resistance 2 that looked sweet and they revealed information about Killzone 2. Other than that it was a pretty lackluster showing.

Nintendo came in third with a pathetic showing. Wii Music looks like its gonna be ass. They announced the room microphone speaker( Wii Speak) for online gaming. (Give me a fucking headset!) They are going to release an add attachment to the wiimote called Motion Plus which is suppose to make it more accurate and a true 1:1 representation. One of them will be bundled in with Wii Sports 2 early 2009. I hope its not more than 15-20 bucks for it. There was still no storage solution or hard drive announced. They did show one Sin Cityesque visual game called Madworld that did look awesome. Other than that the only other thing that I saw that could be cool is the port of Dead Rising. If its done as well as the excellent port of Resident Evil 4 then it could be worth getting. Stay tuned for part 2 and video footage.