Impressions on Microsoft's Press Conference

Microsoft got things rolling this year with some pretty good announcements at their conference.  I felt that the Kinect stuff that was shown was still a bit too "gimmicky" to really appeal to the core of the gaming community, and we'll still have to wait and see if there's a huge triple A title that will give the hardcore players a reason to buy Kinect.  I was surprised that they didn't talk about their Summer of Arcade lineup since they made such a big deal about that last year.  Finally being able to see a glimpse of Metal Gear Solid Rising was great, and I really think that the cut anything mechanic will make that a crazy game.  The Gears 3 demonstration was pretty sweet, even if it only really proved that Epic Games is giving us more of what we already love about the series.  Since the info on the XBOX 360 slim had already leaked out the day before, some of their thunder was stolen on that announcement, but I was glad to hear about it just the same.  Overall, I felt that Microsoft had focused too much on the Kinect software, and showing demos that didn't really make it seem very appealing, instead of showing more of their lineup for the next year.