Microsoft

What can be said about Microsoft’s briefing? Easily the most boring of the three because Microsoft chose to focus primarily on games that will be available this year and only briefly mentioning big 2008 titles like Too Human, Alan Wake, Fable 2, and Banjo Kazooie 3. The entire thing just felt like a giant rehash of things everyone already knows. Don’t get me wrong, MS is in an enviable position being the only system on which you can play both Halo 3 and GTAIV and they made sure no one forgot it. That’s going to be a hard combo for Sony to counter, especially when the 360 is cheaper, to boot.

Microsoft spent way too much time going on about Games for Windows Live and movies on Live Marketplace, two things I couldn’t care less about. In fact one of the biggest disappointments so far for me is Gears of War for PC getting 5 exclusive single player chapters, and new achievements to go along with them, with no word on whether 360 owners will ever get to play them. They really should be released as DLC alongside the PC version.

So basically, a somewhat pointless press conference but at the end of the day Microsoft still has the best console out right now and will continue in that position for the rest of the year at least. The list of games I want to play on 360 for the rest of the year easily quadruples what I want to play on the Wii and PS3 together and many of them are exclusive.

Nintendo
Nintendo’s briefing was even worse than Microsoft’s. The vast majority of it was essentially, “We Are Awesome, Praise Us”.

The segment on online play was just embarassing, insinuating that they have some sort of online strategy because of Pokemon Battle Revolution and the DS/Wii web browser. That led into the completely unsurprising revealing of Mario Kart Wii Online which will ship with a snap on steering wheel almost identical to what Ubisoft shipped with some of its launch titles.

And speaking of cheesy add-on accessories, the WiiZapper seems to just be a piece of plastic that holds the remote and nunchuk together in a shape somewhat resembling a gun. The GunCon3 it ain’t.

Biggest read between the lines moment of the show? Smash Bros. Brawl ain’t gonna have online play folks. If it was, they would’ve mentioned it during this sad “we’ve got online titles, too” bit. I had always wondered how they were going to pull off online in a  4-player fighting game so I can’t say I’m surprised.

Super Mario Galaxy still looks great. It was cool to see Mario in at least one new costume (a Bee Suit), a feature that we haven’t really seen since Super Mario Bros. 3. Hopefully there’ll be a number of different costume power-ups in the final game.

As far as the DS goes I don’t think they showed anything interesting outside of Zelda.

Sony
Who would’ve ever thought Sony would have the best showing? To be fair to Nintendo and Microsoft, much of the excitement in Sony’s briefing was because they showed off a lot of stuff you won’t be playing until next year: Metal Gear Solid 4, InFamous (which looks AWESOME), Killzone 2. If Microsoft and Nintendo had shown their 2008 titles their briefings would’ve been much better too. And Sony’s was far from mind-blowing, it was just less boring than the other two.

That’s not to say they don’t have a decent lineup this year. Uncharted, Heavenly Sword and Ratchet and Clank are looking better and better all the time. Folklore is one of my most wanted games this Fall on any system. Unreal Tournament III is exclusive at least for 2007 and even better it will support PC mods, something that may not even be possible on Xbox Live and is likely the reason it won’t be out until next year for 360.

The PSP Lite is just silly. Video out is kind of cool but I don’t see much point. Where’s the internal storage everyone was expecting? How are people even supposed to know it’s a new model when it looks exactly the same?

Wrap-up
I don’t fault Microsoft for not having an exciting press conference. They wanted to make a point by saying “Look, we’ve got a ton of awesome games coming out this year, not sometime in 2008.” Unfortunately, for gamers looking for news there was really nothing there. You can still rest easy knowing there will be more games coming for 360 than you’ll reasonably be able to play.

Nintendo I’m much more skeptical about. Smash Bros. not being online is a disappointment, yet another Mario Kart game is not exciting news (Editor's Note: OMG, blasphemy), online or not, and while Metroid Prime III and Super Mario Galaxy will both be great they are also probably the only two Wii games I’ll play between now and the end of the year. Their third party support is just as bad as ever.

While Sony had the most exciting press briefing it also demonstrated how much they are leveraged in the future instead of providing a compelling reason to buy a $500 PS3 right now or even this Fall. Sure, all those 2008 titles look great but by the time they come out the PS3 could easily have gotten another price drop. And if the system doesn’t start selling, the PS3 will continue to lose exclusives to Microsoft. They need a hell of a lot more than a decent press briefing if they hope to compete.