Good podcast so far
A few points on the Microsoft discussion:
1. The guy who said ESPN on 360 is great also said his ESPN3 thing wasn't working right.
Apparently ESPN on 360
is ESPN3, so I assume if ESPN3 isn't working then it won't work on your Xbox as well.
2. They didn't show Bulletstorm nor Medal of Honor at the Microsoft conference. You must have been watching parts of EA's conference.
3. I personally think the Kinectimals demo was one of the worst demos shown. The part where the girl was like "OoOh Skittles that tickles!!!!" exposed a significant problem with immersion.
4. There were not a lot of announcements for next year because Microsoft has the worst first-party stable out of the 3. So it's not like they chose not to announce stuff for next year, they simply do not have the games to announce.
Microsoft's 'big' E3 announcement next year will be yet another Halo and another Forza game. That's how poor their first-party lineup is.
Furthermore, 3rd parties are not giving Microsoft exclusive games because it's not 2007 anymore. The worldwide install-base difference is less than 5 million consoles, if you're EA or ActiVision, handing Microsoft an exclusive game is equivalent to leaving money on the table. Hence the reason why Microsoft is aggressively pursuing exclusive DLC, it's all they can get at this point.
In fact, given the middling sales performance of both Mass Effect and Splinter Cell on 360, I'm willing to bet these are the next 'console exclusives' that Microsoft loses.
5. Halo: Reach looks good because it's Bungie's first Halo in HD. And to be honest, it looks nowhere near as impressive as the other FPS games shown at E3.