Ashcraft and I sat through the 100-minute press briefing, right up front, only to be nearly deafened by the loudspeakers cranked to 11 no more than fifteen feet away from us. We had "do! do! do!" drilled into our brains and now we're ready to talk about it. Well, I am anyway. Hopefully, we can look forward to Brian's thoughts later.

Since we went into the presser knowing just about everything Microsoft would be showing, there wasn't much that blew us away. Even folks who hadn't been following the Xbox 360's progress since E3 wouldn't have been too surprised. That said, the company had a solid, if not spectacular, showing.

While the XNA platform and the success of Xbox Live, including Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox Live Marketplace are exciting from a developer/publisher standpoint, it doesn't make for a very exciting press conference. What does get us all hot and bothered are the games.

While there weren't many announcements that personally blew me away, footage of Blue Dragon certainly did. I'm not what you'd call a fan of Toriyama's artwork, but seeing his character designs in action was enough to get me excited about a by-the-numbers JRPG. The hair metal soundtrack alone seems worth the sixty bucks.

Lost Odyssey, however, was the day's tease. After having my brain numbed by the intense carnage, booming soundtrack and thunderous machines of war, we were presented with the most excitement draining menu based combat, pitting our protaganist against a flamethrowing cleaver tank, then quickly reminded us with another beautifully rendered cinematic just how uninteresting the gameplay was. Maybe turn based RPG's just aren't for me, but it's already on my list of things to not pay attention to.

Trusty Bell and Infinite Undiscovery looked like the typical JRPG fare, but look like solid efforts. Blue Dragon cleaned my brain of any fond memories of either of these two titles.

Lost Planet is a must buy, but Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 just gives me a feeling of intense creepiness. And seriously, has anyone on Team Ninja ever touched a breast? Those sloppy gelatinous globs made me queasy.

Xbox Live Arcade announcements were a mixed bag. While the idea of a Pac-Man World Championship sounds cool, it just isn't my thing. Yie Ar Kung Fu is. Unfortunately, it's Japan exclusive, which is a hell of a bummer. I'll be snagging myself some Contra and Super Contra, though, so it's all good. Those two will numb the pain of loss.

All in all, it was a decent showing, but lacked the thrill of major announcements. It's clear that MS isn't going to make a huge dent in the Japanese market, yet there will still be some content for Japanese gamers. They're showing dedication, persistance, and better understanding of the foreign market. Hopefully, for Microsoft, they've got much more to pull out at X06.

Let us know your well absorbed thoughts in the comments. Michael McWhertor