Like most people working in the industry and game fanatics alike, I’ve been watching the news trickling out of E3 rather closely.

As far as I’m concerned Microsoft had the best E3 presence and by far, but E3 was lame anyway. I have to confess, I’ve only watched the Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony announcements live and read about the others so I might have missed some info.

Also, I don’t care about portable devices so I’m only mentioning console announcements.

Microsoft

New Dashboard with LOADS of functionality.

Netflix Integration: Pay 8.99 per month as stream as many movies as you want. AMAZING feature but I doubt it’ll work in Canada

File Sharing : I can make you hear my MP3’s or watch the Netflix movies I stream as long as you have a live gold account. Meh. Some people would love this but I don’t care for it at all.

XBL Primetime : A pretty cool channel with “Game shows” that players can join. They start at certain times just like on TV. Stuff like Jeopardy and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I don’t see the big deal but it’s something to keep an eye on.

Web-Based XBL Marketplace access : I can add demo’s and video’s or whatever to queue from any browser. If my 360 is on, I can watch/play them as soon as I get home without waiting to download them. Nothing amazing but a good feature.

Virtual Avatars : Same as Mii’s with game compatibility too. I could have lived without it but it’s still cool to have. I’m sure my wife will get a kick out of this

Ability to copy games on your Hard Disk with FULL backwards compatibility that promises almost no load times. This is what stole the show for me. I can’t wait for this feature!

A few game announcements but nothing special or surprising. Gears of War 2, Lips, and FF13. Fine FF13 was a surprise but I don’t care about the Final Fantasy series anymore so it’s nothing of import to me.

Sony

No hardware/firmware updates and no release date for HOME. Totally disappointing but expected.

A few new exclusives 3 of which are of interest. God of War 3, Infamous, Mag.

Nintendo

A few game exclusives that don’t interest me at all. Wii Sports 2, Wii Music, Pikmin.

The Wii attachment that improves the Wii Remote. This is cool but I’m sure it’ll be expensive. Also, it sucks that some future games will require it.

As for the games in my Radar, the only one I added was MAG and mostly because I don’t believe 256 players can play online and I want to be proven wrong. I watched another video of infamous and it doesn’t look all THAT good. I couldn’t give a crap about FF13. I wasn’t going to get it for the PS3 and I’m not going to get it for the 360. To me, the Final Fantasy series died half-way through 7. God of War 3 is a “will get when it hits bargain bin”. Not a bad game, just over-hyped like Halo. I don’t expect Gears of War 2 to be much better than the first.

I already had Little Big Planet, Spore and Diablo III on my wish list. To a lesser extent, I’m looking forward to Resident Evil 5, I Am Alive, and POP. I REALLY wanted a Dead Rising 2 announcement! But I didn’t get it Otherwise some look ok but nothing special. E3 was pretty much a bust.

Related posts:

1. E3 2009 : Thoughts on the Console Announcements
2. FF13 no longer PS3 exclusive; is Microsoft slowly killing the industry?
3. Next Gen Games Compared.
4. Sony drops the ball on 2.40
5. Soulcalibur 4: PS3 and 360 versions compared.