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 Microsoft has the stage for the keynote this year at GDC, and here's a rundown of what they stated:
Seven games sold over one million units each on 360 last holiday season. Impressive numbers I must say.
"Games sell better on 360 because they play better on 360." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Shut it, asshole! Don't take Sony's arrogance of years past because that is not true at all, my friend. Oh well, yay self promotion.
Over 1 billion achievements have been unlocked on Xbox Live. Half of those by Tynstar.
Gamers have spent over $250 million on Xbox Live Marketplace on gaming related content.
There are over 100,000 pieces of saved film content for Halo 3 uploaded each day by game players. That's 30% videos than what YouTube gets daily.
Three million songs for Rock Band have been bought.
Xbox Live Community Games is announced. This new platform is about "democratizing" game distriubtion and allowing everyone to publish games. One of the games shown is called JellyCar, and goddamn does it look AWESOME. They show off some other ones that I haven't seen pictures of yet, but JellyCar is just too awesome for me to care. Demos of the games shown are up on Xbox Live Marketplace now.
Guess what? Games are coming to the dead MP3 player Zune. You'll be able to play custom XNA games on Windows, Xbox, and Zune. Most impressive, but who the hell actually owns a Zune (or for that matter wants one)?
AAAAAAAAAAAND Michael Catz, president of Epic Games comes out on stage to show off the next version of the Unreal Engine and talks about Gears of war...where does this lead? Nowhere. Just a little tech demo. Nothing about Gears of War 2 announced...YET
Exclusive GTA4 downloadable episodes this fall. Take that PS3 owners!
Tomonobu Itagaki shows off Ninja Gaiden 2...and the controller fails and he has to reconnect it. Funny stuff, funny stuff. Ninja Gaiden 2 will allow you to take videos and upload them to the internet just like in Halo 3. Again, a 360 exclusive, coming out June 3.
Peter Molyneux comes out to demonstrate Fable 2. One of the new features is a game that's like roulette and craps combined. But, the thing is that this game will be released on Xbox Live Arcade a few weeks before Fable 2 comes out and you'll be able to take the money won in that game and import it into Fable 2. Very very neat idea if I must say so myself. Another new feature: co-op mode. You will be able to call up any character in Fable 2 by logging in as that user on Xbox Live. So, basically, if you want to go play co-op on Fable 2 with a friend, you don't need a memory. You can just login on your friend's system and your character will be imported into the game. Now, if you get any gold/experience playing co-op, you can take it back to your own game. Nice touch. He shows off the combat system.
At the end of the show, just as everyone thinks it's going to end, the screen turns red, shows some guy fighting a locust and chainsawing him to death, CliffyB comes out with a chainsaw and says "GEARS OF WAR 2 WILL BE EXCLUSIVE TO XBOX 360 THIS NOVEMBER." Wow. I sure as hell didn't see that one coming...
Overall, meh, I don't care about MS so nothing here really struck me as being compelling, except the whole Xbox Live Community Games thing. I like how that might shape up to be. Otherwise they made me roll my eyes with that whole "games play better on 360" trash and laugh at the Zune.
Also: one 360 red ringed at GDC, while another got a disc read error. Nice.
I'll be updating this article if I can find any neat pictures or video of the keynote, so stay tuned.
Sources:
http://kotaku.com/358723/...ng-microsofts-gdc-presser
http://www.joystiq.com/20...he-microsoft-gdc-keynote/
 Remember, this week is GDC and the main show starts today. Well, here's the frist big news of the show: Nintendo has revealed the release dates for both Wii Fit and WiiWare, and oddly enough they are within a week of each other!
WiiWare hits first on May 12. The games that will launch on the service are not known yet, but Nintendo stated in their press release that some of the early WiiWare games would be Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King, LostWinds, and an episodic game series from one of my favorite developers, Telltale Games. Other known WiiWare games are Bomberman, Gravitronix, Pokemon Farm, Dr. Mario & Bacteria Extermination, IGF Grand Prize finalist World of Goo, and the amazing looking Eternity's Child. Pricing or size on the games are unknown, but I imagine we'll hear more as launch gets closer.
Nintendo has also announced a May 19 release date (just six days after WiiWare!) for their bathroom scale/game combo, Wii Fit. If you've been living under a rock for the past year and don't know what Wii Fit is, it's basically trying to further the Wii's reputation as a fitness machine (and as a gimmicky minigame machine). Honestly, I don't care one bit about Wii Fit, so here's a link to Wikipedia's article on it.
I'm really excited for WiiWare as this could be the breakthrough that the Wii needs to appeal to me. What I really hope to see is indie developers dream up imaginative ways to use the Wiimote and make innovative games that Nintendo would never think of. Hopefully we'll see more of a indie-driven, innovative and creative environment on there rather than a bunch of existing franchises made for the service. It's looking to be a mix of both with estabilished franchises like Pokemon and Final Fantasy, but those games will be mixed with stuff like Eternity's Child. If we get more games that are like that, then the WiiWare games might possibly end up being better than the actual disc-based games. One can only hope, I guess.
Anyways, be sure to keep it on RFG for all the important GDC news.
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