Microsoft revealed what they considered a flurry of exciting announcements at E3 yesterday, but if you really look at the breakdown of what was actually disclosed you may realize it's rather lackluster. One of the major talking points was X-box being the only system that has all three of the major titles (Madden, GTA, and Halo 3) that created the nostalgia around the 2004 holiday season. They announced the triva game Scene-it is being ported to the system, as well as a partnership with Disney to port their movies to the X-box live service. In real game news they talked about how Gears of War is being ported to the PC and will include extra content and online play via the Live service. They also announced Resident Evil 5, which won't be coming out until next year and showed an exclusive Halo 3 trailer.

Seems like a lot of good stuff right? Now, consider what you actually just heard. Ok, three games that were around in 2004 are still the most exciting thing X-box has to offer. Scene-it is actually really fun for a party game that is highly interactive with 4 people so that's pretty cool news. Disney movies are coming to X-box.... I'm sure all the 7 year old girls that play X-box are doing cartwheels around their bedrooms over this bit. We learned we can pay 50 bucks to play a minuscule amount of added content in Gears of War, oh yeah... and it's a PC game that uses the Live service for online play instead of the internet. WTF is up with that? Just what I was hoping for, PC games that require me to pay for X-box live service on top of my ISP. Resident Evil 5 coming out in over a year does nothing for me, I mean didn't Resident Evil 4 just come out?

Finally there was the Halo 3 trailer. This was the most interesting piece of the presentation, but the overwhelming reaction to it has been "eh". The graphics just don't excite anyone. Players expected Halo 3 to be the pinacle of utilizing the X-box capabilities and they are quite disappointing that this does not appear to be the case.