E308
Author: Chris Brammeier
So as E3 begins to wrap up in Vegas I thought that I would write a mammoth post summarising most of the announcements made.
Firstly, A new Dashboard
You can take a look at the new dashboard here. Firstly let me say that I am really excited by this and think that it is just what the xbox 360 needs. When I got my 360 about 2 years ago now, I loved the experience, the four blades provided access to everything that I needed. But now 2 years later the same experience isn't quite as good, for a number of reasons. Mainly, there have been a lot of new features, firstly the integration of Windows Live Messenger, very well implemented if not a little slow. Also the Marketplace has expanded enormously with new arcade titles added every week and also movies available for rental. This then brought about the restructuring of the marketplace and itself leading to having it's own blade. This is not a bad thing but then add the rest of the improvements in and the dash just feels old now, it is slow and not easily accessible and that is why dash is being redesigned to bring new content forward in places like marketplace and make it easier to view your content.
The Games
There were many announcements in terms of games this year, it is E3 of course. Firstly Gears of War 2 is now coming out for November and looks really cool. Graphics are awesome and the multiplayer is being bumped up from 4v4 to 5v5. I am really looking forward to this game but more so I am looking forward do Endwar. There was a new trailer release and there is a provisional release date of October. Really good. Take a look here if you want to be captivated. Call of Duty 5, otherwise known as Call of Duty:World at War, looks ok but I do feel that it is a step backwards going back to treyarch, the graphics look the same as CoD3 and while they were good, they are superseded by the immense graphics of CoD4. However, there will be co-op in it which has to be good. Guitar Hero:World Tour also looks good and I will hopefully get that but may only get the guitar.
The others
In other major news Nintendo announced that there will be a new addon for the Wii called MotionPlus which brings more control and sensitivity to the Wii remote. A good addition but this seems about the only decent thing to come of the Nintendo press conference. MAG, Massive Action Game is also coming out on the PS3 and it looks ****ing awesome. 256 players in a map and boy I want to be one of them but that means I need a PS3 which I am not getting any time soon.
So that just wraps up most of my thoughts for E3. I will probably make one more post before I go on holiday next week. Then I need to start making some money to pay for all of these games.
