But the games. Oh the games, weren't they all so lovely and.. what's the word... brown! And they all looked like they were CG trailers. Oh wait, most of them were. And those that weren't still have that lovely pre-rendered generic look to them, even those that have a none brown, "realistic" aesthetic.
Forza 5, yes the cars look nice, like a decent Maya render, but the environments all looked a bit off, a bit too perfect, dare I say it, too rendered?
Project Spark was a bit of a standout, a sort of cross between LittleBigPlanet and the much overlooked (and indeed hidden) Kodu Game Lab, with a hint of Kameo thrown in for good measure. It all looked, and was presented in a corporate "aren't we cool, hip and fun" kind of way, which might play well in the US but whiffs of trying to hard over here.
Microsoft had a few technical slip ups during the conference, no sound over the Crimson Dragon trailer, and Battlefield 4 not working... if they can't get a pre-rehearsed presentation right...
I also had issues with the Live Event Player on the Xbox 360 buffering and at one point dropping entirely. Nowt to do with my internet, every other device was running fine so it wasn't a bandwidth issue. If Microsoft can't get a video stream to work properly how will "the power of the cloud" cope for the Xbox One?
Speaking of the"Cloud", with most of the games shown saying that the "Cloud" will enable 'new and dynamic' play experiences and 'alter the way we play', what happens if you don't have the Xbox One connected all the time? Does that mean you get a broken game? Not that you'll be able to play it if you haven't logged on in the last 24 hours (notice how they missed that?)
If Microsoft's conference issues and Xbox Live Event Player issues are indicative of what us gamers will have to deal with when the Xbox One appears, God help us all...
But hey, new Killer Instinct... and the biggest, most genuine cheer for the death of Microsoft Points...
Lets see what Sony has to say, oh, and the others...