Microsoft has a Horrific Press Conference, Sparkled with Big, yet Unimportant Announcements

Microsoft just wrapped up their press conference and holy hell was it awful. On Joystiq's chart, Microsoft had a terrible press conference by nature of its Bingo chart being kind of a freebie. Even so, the closest Microsoft got to announcing a MW3 DLC exclusive was announcing that Xbox would get DLC first, not exclusively. Fable 4 was announce in the form of Fable: The Journey, a Kinect compatible game. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Mass Effect 3 were revealed to have Kinect support, although ME3's is limited to voice commands. Dance Central 2 of course made an appearance, boasting that all songs from the original could be transferred to the sequel, because anyone cares about that. An anniversary edition of Halo: Combat Evolved was also announced, featuring modern day visuals and online multiplayer.

The only true surprises of the press conference were the announcements of Crytek developing a gladiator game exclusively for Microsoft and the very unexpected announcement of Halo 4, the beginning of what Microsoft calls a new trilogy.

In general, Microsoft's presser was nothing but pandering to the casual gamer market, totally ignoring the hardcore gamers who could care less about Kinect, the same mistake Nintendo made at their press conference 2 years ago. In the closing moments, Microsoft also made the incredibly bold and lunatic claim that soon Xbox 360 would become the best selling console in the world, a claim that is likely to be made fun of by Nintendo.

I didn't think it could be possible for Microsoft's press conference to be worse than last year, but they achieved the impossible. I didn't have my blog around this time last year, but back then I gave Microsoft an F rating for their press conference. This year, they're still getting an F, but this time they get the worst kind of F, the "Failure to Appear" kind. There's failing a test because you weren't prepared and then there's failing because you didn't even bother to show up. Hardcore gamers are not going to be purchasing Xbox 360s and Microsoft is kind of counting on that, marketing the console to casual gamers now while Nintendo is expected to reveal their new console.

Microsoft needs to pray that Nintendo's new console is not made of instant win and that Sony's 5 hour press conference does not go over well. Sony is expected to make huge announcements with their 5 hours of time, including information on the new handheld, PSP->PS3 remasters, and hopes for Kevin Butler to apologize for PSN's hack and announcing a huge update for PSN to thank the fans.

Update: Kinect will in fact be getting a software update, and Microsoft ninja-announced Cloud Saving, although it's unknown why Microsoft never announced it during their presser.