It’s not enough that Don Mattrick merely sounds like Criswell, the spit-curled American TV psychic known for his demented ‘predictions’. Together with a bunch of equally insane speakers from Microsoft and its partners, the interactive entertainment boss left this year’s viewer thinking he knew nothing of the future at all - not that it stopped him talking about it. Had someone announced a new virtual currency called the Microsoft Lozenge, which in the absence of interesting videogames to spend it on could be sucked on to make ESPN taste like hot dogs, it wouldn’t have seemed out of place. At least we’d have had a laugh.
There was no new hardware reveal, of course. Not even a whiff of the console codenamed Durango. “Today, it’s all about Xbox 360,” droned Mattrick, kicking off what’s best described as an excellent advert for gaming on PC. Because if Xbox is indeed the biggest console gaming brand on the planet, and if this is the landscape Durango will inherit, then console gaming is in trouble.
One after another, people and games were rolled out that had many wondering what year it was. Halo 4, it turns out, does an excellent impression of Metroid Prime, the demo showing us a fetid forest through a convex tactical visor. Most of it was dedicated to a new enemy type and half of it, at least, seemed to require some thought. Some lore crept in, then blossomed into a montage that spoke of Forerunners, Cortana, and whatever else keeps Halo fans happy. They’re still out there, presumably, and very much in control.
Many expected this year to see a slugfest of frankly barbaric action games, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist drew first blood. Sam Fisher is now in charge of Third Echelon, which besides executing people in balletic fashion means giving plenty of orders. And you know what that means: Kinect! So smug was one presenter’s grin that it fell to his colleague to form the voice commands - and very silly he looked, too. Fisher, meanwhile, has become a mix of Conviction gunplay and Assassin’s Creed traversal. “That’s killing in motion,” apparently.
Next up was EA Sports head Andrew Wilson, who, after introducing Madden 13, proceeded to tear open a hole in the space-time continuum, out of which stepped none other than Joe Montana. That’s right, the Joe Montana Sports Talk Football Joe Montana. He’s still alive. The irony was that, unlike that remarkable Mega Drive game, here Joe was talking into the console rather than out of it. And if that wasn’t revolutionary enough, you can swear at FIFA 13 and the commentary team picks up on it. Progress.
The new trailer for Fable: The Journey involves sub-Zeno Clash combat cut with shots of a player engaged in sub-The Last Airbender live-action spellcasting. There’s a charming game in there somewhere, we’re sure, but the marketing team’s still looking for it. Forza: Horizon’s trailer reminds us what Need For Speed would have aimed for had Criterion not shaken some sense into it. And Gears Of War: Judgment? That could have been a teaser for any Gears game, so don’t expect judgements from us. For whatever reason, no one thought to mention that Horizon is actually very ambitious, and Gears the product of the talented People Can Fly.
What felt like a third of the conference was now dedicated to what you might call the X-top-box: 360 as a streaming media hub. This was a good chance for the presenters to forget that anywhere exists beyond America and Canada, boasting of last year’s UFC app that no one else can get. 35 new content providers were announced, among then Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures. We look forward to learning that we can’t get them either.
Then, suddenly: “Do you love hockey? Of course, right?” We don’t, as it happens, but that didn’t stop a lot of hockey from appearing on the giant screen. That’s the modern notion of choice right there.
The announcement of streaming service Xbox Music came and went in a flurry of lifestyle marketing and UI shots, remarkable for the claim that “you simply can’t talk about entertainment without talking about music”. Introducing fitness app Nike+ Training was the equally shocking: “If you have a body, you’re an athlete.” And if you’ve got a mouth, presumably, you’re a poet. And a console business? You’re Shigeru Miyamoto. Or Rupert Murdoch. Or not. “We know you all love cars!” yelled Marc Whitten stupidly, presenting Xbox SmartGlass.
SmartGlass is best described as a convergence of your Windows devices - tablet, phone, console - around your current activity. So it could “immerse you” in, to use Microsoft’s example, an episode of Game Of Thrones by surrounding you with additional content. That in this demo meant a realtime map showing where the characters are from scene-to-scene, and the usual meta-content about cast and crew. Technically, it’s impressive. It might even end up in games if Microsoft beats the developers hard enough. The last time we checked, though, the most immersive way to watch Game Of Thrones was to establish a realtime link between your eyeballs and the television set, shutting out the inane banter of other household appliances. We must be getting old.
The audience’s bloodlust had calmed enough at this point for some more brutality. The “unique” Tomb Raider looked like Uncharted plus archery until it turned into Crash Bandicoot, Lara stumbling through corridors of rock and trees. It looks gorgeous, just like a movie. You know the rest. Resident Evil 6 looked fun and slick, but not nearly as traumatic as whatever befell its developers backstage, who looked like they’d just seen a ghost. Or Keiji Inafune.
Then - thank God - South Park: The Stick Of Truth was up. The presenting Trey Parker and Matt Stone had clearly been laughing since the middle of the SmartGlass presentation and didn’t actually stop until they were halfway through their lines. They joked that the game would interact with your oven, then they laughed, then we laughed, then we cried while they walked off. They seemed genuinely impressed with Obsidian’s work on the game’s art style and humbled by games as a medium; perhaps they should inherit the entire Xbox business.
Then, in a sneak move worth of Solid Snake, Usher managed to do a live performance halfway through a trailer for Dance Central 3. The guy’s a pro: he even looked like the audience was enjoying it. Xbox Live Kinect game Wreckateer, meanwhile, is a cross between Angry Birds and the bit in Heavenly Sword no one liked.
Somewhere in the midst of this was a cryptic, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it teaser for Matter, another Xbox Live game from Pirates Of The Caribbean director Gore Verbinski. This is one to watch because joining Verbisnki at the helm is Chronicles Of Riddick producer Ian Stevens. Of course, this event treated it like it had been found on the bottom on someone’s shoe.
It sounds like we’re having a lot of fun at Microsoft’s expense here, but it’s gallows humour. Either publishers were genuinely withholding all their games (unlikely), or this was one of the most contemptuous press conferences in E3 history. Returning to the stage before the anticlimactic Call Of Duty: Black Ops II, even Mattrick seemed to be in on some private joke, smirking as he remembered his lines. If anyone was taking this seriously, they were on the wrong side of the stage.
