Microsoft Lays The Smack Down On Nintendo

From the Vault — originally published June 2, 2009. Some links, videos or prices may be out of date.

The saga continues…
I woke up early this morning…a little too early if you ask me (5:30PST). This damn jet lag has been kicking my ass. After a long bid sitting in front of my laptop blogging to you folks Brooklyn and I sat down and watched the Microsoft press conference. Who knew you had to get placed “on the list” for these press events if you wanted to attend them in person? Oh well, next year I plan on sitting in the same row as Master Chief and Cole from Gears of War (V.I.P. status ya dig).

I went into viewing the Microsoft dog and pony show with an open mind. I had no preconceived expectations about what I was about to witness. By the end of the conference I was rubbing my face to make sure that my head hadn’t exploded! Those dudes at Microsoft put their foot into that presentation. They set the bar so high for the other companies that the rest of my day was spent debating with industry people about what Nintendo could possibly do to stay relevant in this console race.

Here are the top 4 ideas we came up with:

1. Miyamoto introduces a Pokémon massive multiplayer online game and rides into the press conference on the back of a cloned Bulbasaur.
2. Reggie introduces Wii-Mech Technology and the top executives from Nintendo enter the conference in exo-skeletons
3. Nintendo introduces a breast feeding peripheral for expecting mothers called Wii-Tit or…
4. A 2D co-op Super Mario game.

Anyways back to Microsoft. Can you believe these dudes brought the Beatles on stage? It’s the fucking Beatles people! That’s about as BIG as it gets (unless Sony brings Prince and Jay-Z onstage to demo Uncharted 2’s co-op mode) and that was just the introduction. Microsoft’s entire presentation was incredible. The only announcements that I felt less than excited about was the Shadow Complex which seemed like a step backwards for Gears of War developer Cliff B. and that Tony Hawk skateboarding peripheral. Lets talk about that Hawk game for a second. First of all the Skate series literally made the Tony Hawk team throw in the towel on their engine and head back to the lab to “re-invent” the brand (a.k.a. make the game more like Skate). Secondly, with the release of this new Microsoft Natal technology isn’t the new Tony Hawk skateboard peripheral already obsolete? In the Natal trailer Microsoft even showed a kid standing in front of his television doing a kick-flip on nothing but his carpet (and sadly enough it looked like he was playing Skate in the video).

Microsoft came out the gate swinging. Most of their jabs were thrown directly at Nintendo (good luck Shigeru). They even brought Spielberg on stage (who originally worked with Nintendo on the Boom Blox project) to let the world know that Microsoft is in the business of strong-arming muthafuckas to jump ship. On a scale of weak to dope, Microsoft press conference scored a HIGH DOPE. And by HIGH I mean I can’t believe my eyes I must be trippin’ ballz HIGH.