Microsoft Comes Out Swingin’ at X06

27 Sep 2006

At X06 in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft unleashed a ton of announcements and plans. It’s a genius move by them to offset all the new information concerning the Nintendo Wii and the Sony Playstation 3. I am a bit surprised (pleasantly) by some of the announcements which include:

Marvel Comics MMO. Uhh.. finally???? Those of us with vivid imaginations tried to turn City of Heroes into what this will be. Will it succeed? I don’t care, I’m just glad to see it done.
HD-DVD option $199. Obviously the smartest move for Microsoft due to the unpredictable outcome of the high definition dvd format war. $200 is a decent price point, making it an attractive solution for the high def enthusiasts waiting for Blu Ray. But… what about HDMI Microsoft??? Hmmm.
Halo Wars (RTS). Peter Jackson is involved but I don’t care about that part. Halo, the FPS, is washed in my opinion and taking it to the RTS genre is a smart move.
Doom on XBLM. Doom is available as a download on Xbox Live Marketplace and includes multiplayer and co-op capabilities over Xbox Live. What a smart move! Too bad I can’t play FPS on consoles, but I’ll sure try for nostalgic purposes. It’ll be hilarious to play co-op, especially if they enable friendly fire.

Impressive I say. See what competition does? Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are all scrambling to make our next gen console experience innovative. Which console is for you? I’d say you have a lot of options to choose from.