So, the big three have all had their moment in the sun for 2010 and while who pulled off the best showing will be dictated by your fanboy interpretations lets take a moment to review each of the three keynotes and see who pulled off the best showing of E3 from as unbiased of an opinion as I can give you.  I’ll be using a ‘+/-’ system to assign my pluses and minuses of each keynote.

lets start off with…

- Call of Duty: Black Ops: Sure it may be a great game but I’ve never understood the logic of hyping a multi-platform game at your E3 keynote.  Its like giving free pup to the enemy.  Oh my bad you get first dibs on “exclusive” downloadable content!!!!

- Same goes for MGS: Rising, only no comment on exclusive XBOX content unless I missed something. Is it really a big deal to say “hey this game will be on our system to so there!” I thought the whole point was to show people why they have to have an XBOX but what do I know?

+ Gears of War 3:  Not my cup of tea but this is the XBOX bread and butter and exactly what they should be hyping.  Experiences that you only get on XBOX with a proven franchise.

+ Fable 3: great looking game in the fun Fable series but this isn’t exactly mind blowing news, its was shown months ago.

+/- Codename: Kingdoms: the claim here is that what was shown was actual in game footage.  I’ll believe it when I see it.  Not enough shown to form an opinion but it looks pretty.

+ Halo Reach: Again, great game for an XBOX only experience but I’m getting the been there done that feeling from the whole presentation.

++Halo Reach pt 2: scratch that last comment they just showed space combat!  No idea if its any good but that was definitely a suprise.

- Kinect: Reggie from Nintendo called, he said its not 2005 and he wants his presentation for the Wii from that year’s E3 back…okay that was a cheapshot lets break this down fully:

• Netflix, Facebook. Last.fm, yadda yadda yadda.  When every piece of electronic equipment I own allows me to tweet, stream music and download movies its hardly exciting to see it on my XBOX, although they did show Justin Bieber during the montage.  Bieber Fever!
• The notion of motion/verbal controls to access the XBOX is intriguing.  Then again it was fun for the first week to point the Wii-mote at the TV and select a menu so maybe  saying “XBOX Play” will get old too.
• videoKinect is cool but that implies that people I would want to have video chat with will own and XBOX 360 AND (emphasize that) the new Kinect unit.  Hmm Showtime I think the only person I know that might apply to would be you!
• ESPN on Demand…yawn (and I love sports!) and its essentially a pay service as it comes with XBOX Gold.  I suppose that’s cool if you already pay for it but I do not (no Wi-Fi on my XBOX means no internet connection and I’m too cheap to spend $100 on the Wi-Fi adapter)
• The games, well underwhelming is the nicest thing I can say.  A year ago we were promised little boy companions (not that I want that) and virtual AI that would interact with us.  A camera that takes pictures of objects from real life and scans them into the game.  Basically an immersive integration of life and video game.  What we got was Wii-Sports, err sorry Kinect Sports.  I’m not saying the games won’t be fun, but this is hardly earth shattering (or worth the rumored $150 price point just for the Kinect unit).  Stand here, wave your arms, jump up and down…haven’t we done this before?
• Oh Snap, they just showed a dancing game with Bel Biv Devoe’s Poison!  Where do I sign up?
• 15 titles at launch and we basically have a bunch of mini game games, fitness games and a couple others.  How Wii-Ish!  If its not broke, might as well copy the heck out of it!
• Star Wars Kinect game shown, appears to be some sort of “on rails” lightsaber game.  Guess that could be fun.
• Last bit of Kinect was a demo of a new Forza game.  What was really interesting about this was the ability to “virtually” walk around the car, open the door and climb in.  That’s the exact type of immersion I was hoping for out of this thing but I can’t help but think I’ll feel like an idiot driving around with a pretend steering wheel in my hand.  Not to mention my arms will probably get tired, in real life I rest my hands on the steering wheel you know.
• This has nothing to do with the keynote but I do have one major concern with Kinect which also may be the flip side to the biggest benefit.  That is no direct connection to the game because there is no controller.  From what I have heard from people that have worked closely with the unit is that without a controller there is no physical interaction or feedback from the game and therefore no immersion.  Whether this is something we all just get used to over time or whether it proves to be the Kinect’s undoing?  Only time will tell.

-  Last and possibly least, a new XBOX “Slim” console which is the XBOX you know and love but better because it includes a 250G HDD, built in Wi-Fi and a special port to provide power to your new shiny Kinect camera.  This of course pisses me off to no end as my XBOX broke a few months ago and I reluctantly went out and plunked down the money for a new XBOX Elite (WITHOUT WI-FI DANG YOU MICROSOFT!!!)  Here is for hoping the price of the Wi-Fi adapter will drop but I’m guessing it won’t, it will probably just disapear and show up on ebay for 5 times as much.

– Oh and to end the show, they gave everyone in the audience a new XBOX “Slim”.  Hmm A room full of video game journalists who will be rushing out to report on your keynote and you just gave them a new $300 system.  Sounds like a bribe doesn’t it?

Overall I have to say I was very underwhelmed by Microsoft this year.  The presentation was totally awkward,  there wasn’t much in the way of surprises or home runs from a software or hardware perspective, and I was really disappointed that the potential shown by Natal last year doesn’t appear to be realized in Kinect.  As an add-on piece of Hardware its all about penetration in the market and I really think that might be where Microsoft and Sony fail in their attempt to chip away at Nintendo.  What about Kinect or Move is going to make 50 million people run out and buy it?  What is really disappointing is that no price was given for Kinect which to me says “hey this isn’t really something we want everyone talking about right now because it could give us a black eye”.   Of course Nintendo followed up that approach with their reveal of the 3DS but that is another post.

Overall, I have to give Microsoft a thumbs down.