Microsoft E3 2009

The biggest news out of the press conference is the Metal Gear series coming to the 360 (not exclusively). A megaton as huge as the Final Fantasy XIII announcement last year. A wise business decision for Konami, but a lot of hearts broken to see the once PlayStation exclusive series coming to the 360. Sony has lost their last huge third party franchise. I'm really interested to hear more information about the game. All we know is that it's called Metal Gear Solid: Rising, with the subtitle, lightning bolt action and that Raiden is the main character. I don't feel that Raiden is about sneaking, so it could possibly drop the stealth aspect and be more action oriented.

There are still two unexplained teasers on the Kojima teaser site. One is the Big Boss face and the other is the mask. The Big Boss face is expected to be for a PSP game called Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. I hope it's a real Metal Gear game and not another AC!D or Portable Ops. Internet speculation says that the mask teaser is for a new Castlevania game with Kojima involved in some way. I have not played a Castlevania game since Symphony of the Night and have read that all games in the series afterwards have been crap. I hope Kojima does the series justice.

Another thing I want to talk about is Last.fm coming to Xbox Live. This awesome service, that is free to use everywhere else, requires a gold account to use, which I think is bullshit. People are already paying for their Netflix membership, but they also have to pay for a gold subscription on top of that? What are we really paying for if PSN is free? I just think these services should be available for silver subscribers. Funny that they never allowed the Last.fm plugin for their Zune player, but now they're adding it to Live. They also announced that Twitter and Facebook are coming to Live, but I'm not positive if they require a gold membership or not.

Another annoyance is the price increase of Halo 3: ODST. They said it was an expansion and that it would not be the price of a full game, but now they say that there is so much content that it warrants the price of a full game. Okay.

I'm in the process of selling off all my 360 stuff. When I started working again and had money, I bought a 360, instead of a PS3 and I really enjoyed it. I came into this generation of gaming kinda late. But then I got a PS3 fairly cheap thanks to a last gen game sale at Hollywood Video, and a trade in bonus promotion at Gamestop. Now I'm mainly a PS3 user. I don't know what happened, but I rarely turn on my 360, except to play the poorly ported Final Fantasy XI. I still haven't finished The Lost and Damned and have a huge backlog of unfinished games, but I'm not having a hard time letting go.