Pre-E3 Kinect Sports Rivals: Looked like shit, CG trailer, and they got rid of avatars, embarrassing.
MGS5: It looked beautiful, especially the animation. Absolutely next generation. However -- it made even less sense than most MGS games. There were buzzwords and philosophies shouted. The character names were stupid. This is a stupid series. And hearing that the primary themes are race and geopolitics gives me even less confidence--I simply don't think the team has a handle on those subjects.
Xbox 360 Jr: Looks neat but weird.
Xbox 360 Gold PS+ knockoff offer: I don't give a crap about the two games mentioned, but more value is good. I'd like to see what "yours to keep" means.
World of Tanks: This is a big deal, but, and this is my first major point. Conferences need to stop giving time to executives from partner companies. I mean that in the general sense, but especially to companies whose executives do not speak English at a native fluency. It's awkward, it's stilted, and it provides no value.
Max and the Brotherhood Whatever: I think this looks great, a big step up from the first Max game which was terrible. Microsoft highlighting it is a vote of confidence, as is buying the team.
Dark Souls 2: Skipped footage to make lunch.
Ryse: Looked terrible. Actually, visually it looked quite good. You can really see the step between this generation and next, bigtime. But the game looked terrible. Combat that's worse than God of War (and I already hate brawlers). Minigame-type things like Heavenly Sword. QTEs. It went on forever. Total disaster. Also, another company exec speaking poor English.
Killer Instinct: Well I'm glad they didn't ditch the cheese factor. Definitely in the spirit of the originals. Seemed early.
Sunset Overdrive: Looked gorgeous, and I'm very glad for Insomniac. Cartoon style. Cool premise. Like Mirror's Edge and Bulletstorm in one.
Forza 5: Looked good, I'm not going to play it. Between Forza, GT, and Project CARS I think we're getting really close to moments that look pretty near exactly like real life. This lasted so long.
Minecraft: Same game new platform, not an example of how you support indie devs
Quantum Break: I like the idea of a detective type game like this. Looked visually great (if it was in-game). I'd like to hear more about the live action elements and know more about gameplay. Sam Lake's English would be the bare minimum I would consider acceptable to be presenting.
D4: Looked like a 360 game, but cool art style, and I'm onboard for SWERY. The weird fist-punch thing looked weird but I am onboard for episodic mystery gaming. Pumped.
Project Spark: I heard before the conference that Microsoft was working on a "little big planet style creation game", so that's this obviously. Visually it looked pretty good and the creation mode felt like From Dust a little bit. The creation tools look very simple and easy to use. I'd like to see if it works without Smartglass. I'd also like to see if it could actually have depth, rather than being a sandbox toy--The gameplay looked simple but attention-holding and interesting. In that regard it reminds me of Scribblenauts, which was an excellent execution of its concept but never quite came together to be an excellent /game/ (I haven't played Unleashed). Windows 8, meh.
Smartglass: This is not a good technology. It is not a good idea. The content shown on it is not interesting. And using Ryse, by FAR the least interesting content presented, to highlight it shows. All of the stuff demonstrated on Spotglass felt like stuff that was doable in the 360 with basically the same level of ease.
Smartjoin: Seemed like 360's regular matchmaking.
Killer Instinct Fight Stick Demo: Awkward gaming banter is bad enough when Ubisoft does it, it's worse when a first-party publisher does. The game looked like Killer Instinct though. But, like, stop pretending these are real people talking to each other. They are not.
Upload Studio: Looks good, like Sony's DVR stuff. I'm glad this is happening. I hope it's uploaded to a service that allows me to access the raw files and resubmit to other sharing channels. Twitch TV support makes total sense, I thought it was weird that Sony emphasized uStream which is really less important than Twitch. Software looked good, hope it works as well as the demo.
Friend List: it was a stupid cap to begin with.
No More MSP: Yes we know.
Family Xbox Live Gold: Yes we know.
Crimson Dragon: No sound? What the hell? Footage looked like the 360 version. Still interested in playing it.
Dead Rising 3: Well, we know this has been coming for a while. To me, Dead Rising's crowd stuff probably was the first major demonstration of the power of the 360, so it's fitting as a demo. I don't personally like the games (although Case Zero was neat). Framerate seemed iffy, graphics don't look that great. Honestly the game design seemed kind of last gen, State of Decay really is a challenge to how Dead Rising could be a cooler game and this didn't satisfy. Crowd AI stuff looks a little better, zombies feel a bit faster. I dunno, this is disappointing to me. No one gives a shit about Smartglass. Exclusive.
The Witcher 3: This guy is hilarious and goofy, I love how unprofessional CD Projekt is. I don't really care about this game.
Battlefield 4: The more human beings care about Battlefield, the less I do. I really, really don't care about this. Another sound fuckup. Please Understand. Dumb dialogue, dumb concept. If they said this was Call of Duty, I'd believe them. We've had enough of this exact game.
Sword and Sworcery 2Below: Cool trailer.
Black Tusk's game: Fireworks! Fantavision 2! Fuck yes. Oh. Maybe not. Guns. Too bad. Well they didn't show anything, so ok???
Prince of Persia: Halo: meh I'm several games behind and the things I like about the game don't include the universe, so an early tease doesn't do anything for me. 60fps is neat. This was lethargic.
Price: Expensive but I assumed so.
Titanfall: Wow it's Call of Duty meets Halo who cares. Long-ass segment oh my god just get it over with.
Overall: Setting aside what I think of the Xbox One's direction and decisions about DRM and stuff (which have nothing to do with the conference), the conference itself was good. Most segments were kept to an appropriate length, they showed a lot of games including some interesting new stuff, and even misfires like Ryse and DR3 are more exciting than some stuff they showed at past conferences. There's nothing here that compels me to be on the ground floor, day one. But I still have reservations about the hardware too.
I'd say this is a 7.5 or 8 out of 10.