E3 2008 is underway in Los Angeles, and since I’m a 360 fanboy I was anxious to see what Microsoft announced at their press conference. Above are shots from the new Xbox Live, to be launched in the fall. Ummm… yeah. Basically they’ve re-designed the Xbox Live interface to look like Apple’s Cover Flow with a bunch a Miis running around. Not good. Let’s leave the cheesy community avatars to Nintendo, shall we?
Now to the games. I mean, that’s the reason we have Xbox, right? A surprise announcement today: Final Fantasy XIII will be released for the 360. The move to Xbox from the Playstation is a major coup for Microsoft. Other games previewed were Guitar Hero World Tour, Fable II, Rock Band 2, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3 and Resident Evil 5. Gears of War 2 looks much, much bigger and more epic than the first, with forest-like environments unseen in it’s predecessor. And of course, you can still cut people in half.
Microsoft has been saying since the earliest days of Xbox that they want it to become the only box you need in the living room. It’s not even close to that ambition yet, but with their (long rumored but official) announcement today that they’ve partnered exclusively with Netflix, they’ve made me a believer! Now I can watch all those streaming titles in my queue on my big fat Aquos instead of my crappy computer monitor. Yay. The Netflix deal will go into effect in the fall with the re-launch.
