So, I also watched they keynote last night. Looking back on it now, I feel it was a huge waste of an hour or so. I was expecting microsoft to really bring out something interesting. Xbox 360 related or not, I was just hoping for something. I think the IPTV thing was the most interesting part of the keynote, but even thinking back on that, I don’t see how this will provide anything that you’d really want to see over watching cable or satellite as it is now. On top of it, I’m pretty sure that because it’s microsoft we’re talking about, none of the content is going to be free.
We saw no hdmi or hard drive announcements. The only halfway interesting thing game related was the cross platform gaming, with uno. Although at first, this was kinda a cool demo, after thinking about it, it’s not really that amazing. Microsoft is most likely going to try to force pc gamers to start paying for live, across as many games as possible. Uno and Halo2 are supposed to be the first cross live titles, but I heard that Halo2 is actually not going to be cross platform multiplayer, only cross platform in the sense you can message each other via the 360 or pc. This is kinda stupid, but the alternative would surely mean that console users would be slaughtered.
It’s not all doom and gloom for microsoft, but Sony even announced higher sales during their launch than Microsoft had during theirs a year ago. Personally, I think this is mainly because of people buying the systems only to resell them, but it’s definately something that needs to perk microsofts ears up.
It made me think of a funny way to look at what Microsoft says about the number of consoles shipped. With the constant back and forth motion of refurbs being sent in and then arriving doa to users nationwide (possibly worldwide) it makes me wonder how many consoles are actually out there.
The only other part of the keynote I felt was worth commenting on was the whole “house of the future” crap. Bill Gates demoed a kitchen where rfid works in tandem with a projection or otehr type display to show you recipes and other stuff thats kitchen related. We saw this all a few years ago, and why it’s in the keynote I have no idea. Then we saw this bedroom with lcd panels on the wall showing weird random pictures and a webcam view in a picture frame. I just can’t shake the feeling that MS really has nothing new or interesting to show this CES, it’s kinda like they are unprepared or something.
I hope the next few days show us something better here.
