E3 2004: Xbox Conference: Full Report

Extensive report from Los Angeles as Microsoft announces new software and the long overdue arrival of EA on Xbox Live. Discover the latest on Halo 2, Dead or Alive and Rare inside.

The Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles was the venue this evening for Microsoft's Pre-E3 2004 conference - an unremarkable event that offered some quite remarkable moments. The genuinely entertaining and typically stylish presentations contained several key announcements including a new firtparty racing sim and the utterly vital, but not-so shocking arrival of Electronic Arts supporting Xbox Live. The importance of that announcement was underlined by the surprising personal appearance of Muhammad Ali. But more on that later.

J Allard opened tonight's Xbox press conference.

The conference kicked off in a slightly different way to previous years as several important game trailers were all shown in succession. Unreal Championship 2 set things in motion, Shrek 2 and Full Spectrum Warrior from THQ picked up the pace, MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf got the audience really pumped up, Rare's newly renamed Conker: Live and Reloaded offered an exceptional Terminator-themed trailer full of expletives, while Peter Molyneux's Fable got its latest showing and Lucas Arts' Star Wars: Republic Commando proved it looks even better than it did last year.

The hilarious "Team Xbox vs Team Sony" reality drama.
See the full version here shortly!

Enter J Allard: "It's absolutely amazing and stunning to me how developers keep getting more and more out of the innovative Xbox platform to deliver these kinds of experiences. And that's why we're continually putting more and more into the platform itself."

Allard reminded attendees that Microsoft is keen to constantly talk up software over hardware in the gaming battle. "Through innovation and leadership, we're changing the game. Everything we do begin with software - the key to unlocking the real potent of this industry. It's the catalyst for growth, the enabler of innovation, and in many ways, what brings many of us into the room tonight."

The conference touched on next generation Xbox on more than a few occasions: "We built and designed Xbox to run great software, and we'll build its successor to run great software as well."

J moved onto the matter of online, and what followed was surely the most amusing thing ever shown at an E3 conference. The big screen ran a pseudo-reality soap opera, entitled "The Novice", which starred Microsoft's Robbie Bach, J Allard and Peter Moore, opposite lookalikes playing Sony's Ken Kutaragi, Kaz Hirai and Andrew House. The hilarious, rather lengthy sequence put the two "Teams" at a boardroom meeting table with their next "big task" - an opportunity to produce an amazing new online role playing game. They're then told to "get the hell out of here and get started."

Xbox Live Arcade: Download and play classic games.

The next scenes suggest that Microsoft feels it did far more market research in coming up with what we now know and love as Xbox Live, while Sony messed it all up big style. All the while, tongue-in-cheek moments such as Peter asking a gamer "what online games do you want" resulted in the usual list of games such as Halo, to which Peter replied, "what about Chu Chu Rocket as a pack-in?" Unsurprisingly Microsoft "won the contract", with the judge damming the Sony trio: "What do you think we're selling here, lemonade? You didn't talk to customers, and the only thing you've shown me is a peripheral sale. The whole online thing has been a complete and total disaster!" A visibly desperate Hirai then blamed Andrew for the failure, and Ken summarised, "To be honest, we didn't see the online thing coming." After being told they were "fired" and ordered out of the building back into Times Square where the scene first started, the three "losers" said "Oh well, so how about some Halo tonight?" And an even better final touch completed the piece, which you'll be able to see in full as part of our imminent E3 video coverage.

The outrageously cocky sequence served its purpose in illustrating Xbox Live's success to date, and in setting up the next stage of the service, a series of new features including Live Now which - among other things - enables live one-to-one video chat. A bit like Sony's recently announced EyeToy: Chat. The extension of Xbox Live to enable video chat was positioned a natural progression from existing features such as buddy lists and leaderboards - and to illustrate the point, J had a live chat session with sexy pornstar Jenny McCarthy. "The next logical step when you have a friend like Jenny McCarthy is to see her!" explained J.

Hot stills from the new Crash Reloaded XNA demo!

Another really cool new feature that has been developed for Live is called the Xbox Live Arcade, which will allow gamers to download classic games on demand from companies such as Namco, Atari and Tecmo. It looks pretty cool - and although you can already get the whole lot illegally on a modded Xbox - this legitimate Xbox Live route is another example of Xbox Live making big efforts to make online console gaming bigger and better.

In discussing the possibilities of the next generation Xbox machine, J also took the opportunity to re-show the XNA Crash demo from six weeks ago, and it still looks incredible. But better than that, he also showed how far Pseudo Interactive - the development team behind the demo - has come in the last six weeks. Crash Reloaded was essentially the same - except now there are two Saleen S7s, speeding straight into each other - and the real-time results are, visually and technically speaking, utterly astounding. Be sure to catch the Crash Reloaded movie in our imminent E3 video coverage.

J also talked about Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, an MMORPG developed on XNA in "a client server environment" that seems to be another stepping stone to bringing Xbox Live for Windows closer to the traditional console service.

To conclude the initial games section of the conference, a sequence of games was shown, including Mortal Kombat Deception and Sega's OutRun2, which we were fortunate enough to get an advanced playtest with last week (see our detailed impressions as soon as E3 kicks off on Wednesday).

Brand new Halo 2 screens, because we love you.

Next up, Peter Moore entered the stage to talk about Xbox's big hitters - Halo 2, Dead or Alive Ultimate, Doom 3, Jade Empire and the freshly announced Forza Motorsport. He said: "The goal isn't just to please gamers, the goal is to absolutely blow them away."

Peter didn't waste any time in getting straight to the point. "Before I go any further, I know there is one game on everyone's mind right now... Halo 2 is the sequel to one of the greatest games ever made, and the most anticipated game on any platform."

Bungie's Joe Staton and Max Hoberman came on stage to play Halo 2 multiplayer and explain brand new features. They set the scene: "The year is 2552. After a long flight, our colonial defence has failed, and the covenant has made its way to Earth. Today's mission takes place twenty clicks north of the covenant's primary point of incursion, in an abandoned town ship on the coast of East Africa."

The awesome new Halo 2 level, Zanzibar, in multiplayer.

Graphically the most noticeable thing about this latest Halo 2 build was the impressive framerate of 60fps - in other words, perfect, and a marked improvement over the original's "acceptable thirty".

The vast, detailed and beautiful level, entitled "Zanzibar", was the scene for an actual network game between the two Bungie representatives. Joe played a soldier and Max played an elite carrying a brutal long range energy sword weapon, capable of taking out entire teams. The cool dual-weapon system was showcased, significantly enriching the Halo experience. The flying vehicles - which we first saw this time last year - were back in this demo. The vehicles are now destructible, and the ability to chuck another guy off his vehicle and take control of it, was again well received by the audience. Joe also demonstrated a weapon he referred to as the "ultimate son of a bitchstick", before revealing how many secrets are hidden throughout levels. The whole demonstration lasted about ten minutes, and whilst not quite as thrilling as last year, still rocked. We'll be bringing you a whole lot more on the key title from behind closed doors this week.

Peter Moore talks about Xbox's heavy hitters.

Most importantly, Peter announced the street date for the killer app, and affirmed its credibility by having it tattooed on his arm. November 9 is the date for your diaries. He added: "And yes - that IS 2004!" He revealed that it will be one of the biggest game launches in history: "We want the launch to be as big as the game."

Peter went on to show the latest, and by far the most impressive trailer for Tecmo's Dead or Alive Ultimate. The new trailer revealed brand new, awesomely impressive fighting environments, like a wildlife stage in Kenya featuring a muddy water pool, giraffes and elephants. An elephant - effectively serving as a wall - screeched on its hind legs when a fighter was thrown into it. Accompanied by the opening music from Dead or Alive 2, the trailer also showed impressive VF3-style "undulation" on some areas like the stairs of a new castle stage. Some cool new gameplay touches were also revealed - on a snowy stage, Zack further punished Jann Lee after knocking him to the ground by pouncing on him - and then sliding down the slope with his full weight on him. Back on the subject of the girls, and perhaps most importantly, the tiny bikinis are IN.

New screens from Dead or Alive Ultimate

Next, an Xbox specific trailer for Doom 3 was shown, consisting purely of Xbox footage. To be brutally honest, the trailer - although more atmospheric in a kind of teasing Silent Hill way - was nowhere near as impressive as last year's trailer, and worryingly, some in-game sequences revealed an unsightly sub-thirty framerate. Several people I talked to after the conference noticed and remarked on this too. Ouch. It still looked cool, but didn't really show anything we haven't seen - looking better - on previous PC trailers of the game.

BioWare's Jade Empire was next on Peter's AAA showcase list. The promising RPG is set to be huge at the show this week. We'll have tons on the game including the new trailer shown today, later in the week.

Cool new environments and features in DOAU.

Finally, Peter announced the "first fully customisable racing simulation for Xbox". Forza Motorsport is Microsoft's own GT4 challenger, with a great deal of emphasis on personalisation, customisation and fine tuning. The marketing message is that Forza Motorsport cars will be so finely tuned that it's not a car any more, "it's you". The trailer reveals, "You are what you race."

Peter revealed more about the game: "We built this extraordinary game with the help of top engineers from Ferrari's formula one program. We wanted that level of racing realism. We have designed the performance of the cars to be adversely affected by damage, just as in real racing."

Doom 3 on Xbox looked like it has some way to go.

Moore concluded, "We're changing the game and giving gamers what they want."

Finally, Robbie Bach entered the stage to discuss Microsoft's business and strategic position in the games industry four years on since the Xbox's first E3, and how "it takes much more than hardware to make great games." He discussed hardware, services and partnerships a bit more. "With XNA we're working with our partners to ready ourselves for the next generation."

Forza Motorsport, Microsoft's new racing sim.

But his really big announcement was official confirmation - FINALLY - that Electronic Arts is now on board with Xbox Live. EA's top man, Dom Mattrick, entered the stage with some sports superstars to promote the line-up including Mi>FIFA Soccer, NHL Hockey, NBA Live and NFL Football. But perhaps the biggest moment of the conference was the addition to the on-stage sports personality line-up of Muhammad Ali, representing Fight Night. A pretty remarkable standing ovation followed, the likes of which I certainly haven't seen in many years of game conference going.

Bach discusses the latest on Microsoft's strategy

Bach concluded with some typically metaphoric food for thought. "We entered the game, we've played the game at a high level, and now we're changing the game. We're taking the leading position to put gaming on par with all forms of media and entertainment. We've shown you a glimpse of the future by showing you things happening with software right now." And in closing: "There's a changing of the guard in the industry. Yesterday's rules are a part of the past... innovation will vanquish status quo in the marketplace of ideas. Xbox is moving the side with innovation. We hope you'll join us. Thank you and good night."

Official: EA on Xbox Live, sponsored by Muhammad Ali

The conference lacked the scale of announcements and big name product unveilings expected at the Sony and Nintendo conferences tomorrow. But the strong showing was impeccably presented in Microsoft's usual sleek, flashy style - and the emphasis was predictably on killer software. There's no denying it, Xbox is becoming stronger and more influential all the time, and software is getting ever sexier. However this time next year the industry, and Microsoft's competition, will be seeing some Xbox-specific hardware announcements for a change - and from quite a different standpoint to when the company first hit the scene. Oh, and it looks like Perfect Dark Zero will be an Xbox 2 launch title, by the way.

Adam Doree
Director, Kikizo.com