Solid, but unspectacular showing from Xbox 360

Microsoft clearly had a hard task. They had to follow the Sony press conference which revealed the PlayStation 3 and gave us all a glimpse of what games on the machine would look like. With Microsoft’s new console already revealed and a number of games already seen, their pre-E3 conference was never going to have the wow factor of Sony’s. It was, however, still a pretty good showing.

The biggest announcement at the conference was that Square-Enix will support the Xbox 360. This is obviously big news for Microsoft who desperately needs strong support from Japanese developers in order for the Xbox 360 to perform well in Japan. The first game from Square, unfortunately, isn’t as exciting as the announcement itself. Final Fantasy XI is coming to the Xbox 360, the MMORPG that has already appeared on the PC and the PlayStation 2. Square also showed off a tech-demo of what they believed future games could look like on the 360 and promised that Final Fantasy XI is jus the first game from this new partnership.

Backwards compatibility was also mentioned, although it was really only brought up in passing. The Xbox 360 was said to be able to play the “top-selling Xbox games.” Nothing more was said on the subject and it leaves more than a few questions in the air. Are Microsoft just covering themselves in case all games don’t work or will only the most popular Xbox games run on the new console? Something else that was left unanswered was the console’s release date and price. All that was made clear was that the console will have a worldwide release by this holiday season.

While nothing Microsoft showed could compare to the demos Sony showed (which if in real time were stunning) they had a good number of impressive looking games on display. Surprisingly Perfect Dark Zero got absolutely zero show-time, with the game only appearing in a montage of clips at the end of the show. Game such as Dead or Alive 4, Project Gotham Racing 3, Ghost Recon 3, NBA 2K6 and Kameo were all given time during the show. Not to be outdone, EA showed videos for a number of titles including FIFA, Madden, Tiger Woods, NBA Live, The Godfather and Need For Speed Most Wanted. Need for Speed was the only game of the six that was demoed with any real looking game footage, and while the frame rate was clearly un-optimised, the game looked very promising. EA also announced that they have more than 25 games in development for the Xbox 360 and are strongly behind Microsoft and the console.

Sadly, Halo 3 wasn’t mentioned at the show, but with Halo 2 only being released last November it as hardly surprising. A lot of the show was dedicated to showing the new back-end to the Xbox 360 experience. The Xbox 360 guide looks very promising, but it was unclear how the console will link to home PCs and other entertainment devices. The Xbox Live service will have two service levels, as was revealed last week. Silver will give gamers basic functionality, while the subscription-based gold service will offer everything from tournaments to spectator mode. Peter Moore went as far as to say that certain Xbox Live events could have over 250,000 spectators.

Overall, Microsoft’s pre-E3 conference was solid, but pretty unspectacular. Few games were shown using clear gameplay footage and this was disappointing. While competing with the PlayStation 3was always going to be hard, some actual demos of games due for release later this year would have gone down pretty well.

We’ll bring you more coverage of the Xbox 360 during the week.