Last year, Microsoft’s E3 press briefing emphasized a number of things, very few of which were exclusive games. Sure, there was the Halo 4, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and Minecraft announcements, but exclusive, core games were few and far between for such an event. The focus was geared toward casual Kinect games and entertainment features like live television, UFC, and YouTube, all things which the core gamer audience didn’t necessarily care about. Things were different this time around, and while it may have lacked the sort of surprise game reveals you hope to see, it was still a much more compelling showing for gamers than last year.
As far as non-gaming announcements went, SmartGlass was the big one, and that is not even exclusively non-gaming. Wii U-esque functionality is coming to 360 using tablets and phones many of us already own, enabling things like interactive Game of Thrones maps while watching the show and hot route drawing in Madden. Microsoft also bulked up its entertainment offering, announcing that Nickelodeon, Paramount, and Machinima would be coming to Xbox Live. Sports were given the most attention in this area, as NBA and NHL games will be coming to the system, as will 24-hour Watch ESPN programming featuring content from ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN 3, and ESPN U. The long-rumored Xbox Music service was announced, although details were scant — a sizzle reel is all we got to see. We did get a demonstration of new a Bing feature allowing you to voice search for TV show and movie genres to find content which can be watched through Netflix, HBO Go, and so on.
