Don Mattrick Says Nintendo And Sony Have Been "On Vacation"

Forget what you think about how those E3 pressers went, Xbox honcho Don Mattrick is here to tell you what he thinks. And what does he think? He thinks the other companies have been slacking off — that they've been "on vacation." No, not just "on vacation," make that "on an extended vacation." Here's the sound-byte:

I think we got more than 12 months’ work done, and others went on an extended vacation. Hopefully they got some good vacation photos, because they sure weren't showing up at work... Of course I'm going to be biased, but so far what I've heard is that Sony and Nintendo have disappointed. And Microsoft has been leading, innovating and driving a very comprehensive global programme... We're building momentum and we're on a scale that no other consumer electronics company or entertainment company has been able to achieve in nine years. It's been a very good show and I'm very pleased with what we've been able to accomplish. I think there was a lot of good work, a lot of innovation and a lot of news from us.

Oh, Don.

Mattrick: Rivals have been slacking off [MCVUK]

Afro Samurai Gets Comic-Con Appearance

Afro Samurai will be demoed to the public for the first time at this week's Comic-Con International in San Diego, Namco Bandai announced today.

The playable demo will give gamers a chance to check out what looks to be a pretty stylistic fighter based on the Samuel L. Jackson executive produced anime series. There will also be an Afro Samurai panel on Thursday featuring the creators behind the show. Panelist members will include Samuel "Snakes on a Plane" Jackson, THe RZA, Takashi Okazaki and Leo Chu. The group plan to talk about the development process, dish on some behind-the-scenes anecdotes and explain the inspiration behind the characters, music and story.

Xbox Live Makes Horror Funny This Fall

We know that directors James Wan (Saw), David Slade (30 Days of Night), James Gunn (Slither), Andrew Douglas (The Amityville Horror), and Marcus Nispel (Friday The 13th) can be scary, but how are they at making us laugh? Microsoft explores this concept this fall as they deliver original comedy pilots from the masters of horror to the Xbox 360. The concept was conceived by Gunn and Producer Peter Safran of Scary Movie fame, which makes a whole lot of sense, though I'm not sure the actual results will. So far my favorite pilot description is for James Wan's Doggie Heaven, in which a young man is shot to death only to wake up in the wrong afterlife. Hilarity ensues!

While most of us will have to wait until the fall, Comic-Con attendees will be able to catch a sneak peak at the “Horror Meets Comedy Xbox Original Short Film Pilots” panel on Friday, just a small slice of Microsoft's Comic-Con presence detailed below. McWhertor is on his way there today to check everything out, as well as purchase limited edition action figures for me which I will totally reimburse him for - promise.

Midnight Club: Los Angeles Hands-On

When we last saw Rockstar San Diego's Midnight Club: Los Angeles, way back at the Leipzig Games Convention, we walked away impressed. Pissed that we weren't allowed to actually drive, but impressed. Thankfully, E3 wasn't a total bust, given that we got to spend a good hour playing the Xbox 360 version of the newest Midnight Club.

It's really too bad our illegal street racing skills weren't up to the challenge. Sprinting through Sunset Boulevard in a Mazda RX8, then through the Hollywood hills in a late '60s Ford Mustang Boss 302 showed that, while we were thrown a couple of "REP" points here and there, we have a long way to go before actually having a respectable racing reputation.

Fortunately, we looked pretty good, even when finishing fourth.

E3 2008 kicked off Monday last week with a press conference from Microsoft that started out quiet and ended with a shot that rang out across the internet. While many people expected this year's event to be dominated by attempts to snag the more casual gamer with gimmicks like motion control, Microsoft instead stayed the course (with a few notable exceptions), building on their own concept of community and social gaming rather than going for the obvious aping. In case you missed our extensive liveblogging of the event, here's a run down of the big news out of Microsoft at E3 2008.

Or so say Microsoft! Speaking at Gamefest yesterday, Microsoft’s games division CTO Chris Satchell thinks the console's new dashboard, avatars and UI are more than a facelift. He sees them as a transformation.

What this does is reinvent the Xbox. I don’t think any one has ever done this before – transformed a console during its lifecycle.

You could just as easily say no console has ever felt the need to transform halfway through its lifecycle, either.

Satchell: 'We've reinvented the Xbox' [Develop]

Getting a proper impression of a game like Fable II, one that spans the lives of multiple generations, is almost impossible at an event like E3. And if Fable II lead Peter Molyneaux is being accurate when he calls the game "The biggest, most complete story of any game I've ever created," we haven't seen, well, anything yet.

That's why it's helpful that something like Fable II can be broken down into digestible, feature-focusing chunks. The game's dog, for example, with its ability to help out in battle, its nose for hidden treasure, we know is going to be A Big Deal. We won't be surprised if Man's Best Friend plays a more important role than Molyneux led us to believe in our sit down preview of his Xbox 360 game.

We just know he's going to emotionally manipulate us with that lovable digital mutt.

Red Faction: Guerrilla Rhino Packs, Destruction and 360 Avatars

I know the video game industry seems to be perpetually going through a shooter glut. And, yes, I love shooters, so I tend to put up with it. So bear that in mind as I proceed to fawn over Volition's upcoming Red Faction sequel, Red Faction: Guerrilla.

The game will be set on a terraformed Mars, 50 years after the events of the original Red Faction game. Now the Earth Defense Force folks are in control and have turned bad. Players will take on the roll of a man caught up in the struggle against the EDF. The game will play out in third-person perspective and the entire world will be destructible.

You can, I was told, bring down an entire three-story building piece by piece. The multi-platform game's open world will also allow you to steal vehicles, swipe weapons even recruit other people to join your band of guerrillas.

While I didn't have a chance to play around with the single player campaign, Volition did give me time, lots and lots of time, to play matches of multiplayer.

GFW Live Goes Free, DirectX 11 Unveiled

Games for Windows - Live multiplayer features are free, effective today, Microsoft announced at today's GameFest 2008 conference in Seattle.

The move to free means that achievements, enhanced "truskill" matchmaking, cross-platform play with the Xbox 360, voice and text chat, friends lists, are all now free to Windows gamers. This change to free is for all Games for Windows LIVE titles, past and future.

Microsoft also announced plans to introduce Games for Windows - Live marketplace this fall, which will include free and paid downloadable game content, demos, trailers and "more." Finally, the company said they are working to streamline the interface for the PC and reduce technical requirements for developers. Too little, too late? Too early to tell, I say.

In other news from GameFest, DirectX 11 was unveiled.

XNA Creators Club Games Priced, Detailed

Back in February Xbox 360 gamers got a chance to try out some of the exciting homebrew games coming out of the XNA Code Creators Club, and this holiday season they'll be able to buy them. Microsoft has dropped details about how pricing and payments will work for folks who have their games published via the new program, now called Xbox LIVE Community Games. Paying members of the Creators Club will be able to submit their games to the community for peer review, and if they deem it worthy they'll be able to set a price and put it up for sale.

CNBC's Jane Wells - Sony Is Winning, My Son Says So

I have to get me one of these "children" I keep hearing so much about. They seem terribly handy. Jack Thompson uses his to help expose the chinks in video game retail, our own Brian Crecente does some of his best work when dealing with the tiny person he helped manufacture - even CNBC reporter Jane Wells is getting in on the act, using her son to illustrate while Sony is going to win the console battle via humorous anecdote. Her 16-year-old son remained an Xbox 360 fan throughout the Microsoft E3 presser, but then Sony went and changed his mind.

Then he watched the Sony press conference, and the world as we know it changed. After hearing about “Metal Gear Solid 4”, as well as other PlayStation exclusives in the pipeline and the awesomeness of Blu-ray, he promptly packed up his Xbox 360 and all his games and went down to Game Stop to trade them in.

Okay, NOW they can call the game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. How did Activision get away with this for so long without including Joe Satriani and Steve Vai? We probably should have set the company on fire for this gross oversight, but it's too late now. In two days Satriani's "Surfing with the Alien" and Vai's "For the Love of God" will be joined by Buckethead's "Soothsayer" to create the Guitar Virtuoso Track Pack, barely giving us time to gather enough pitchforks and torches to form an angry mob. We always miss the good angry mob moments, don't we?

The Guitar Virtuoso Track Pack will be available July 24th via PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace.

Oh D3Publisher, you have such perfect timing. After a week spent flying across the country, running around a semi-crowded convention hall on little if any sleep, and getting so deep in gaming that I have waking dreams about upcoming titles, there is nothing I need more than a little mindless Puzzle Quest goodness, and you're delivering. The Xbox Live Arcade expansion pack for Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is hitting tomorrow, bringing with it four new classes (Bard, Rogue, Ranger, and Warlock), more that 25 new quests, 50 new spells, and 40 new magical items. Subtitled Revenge of the Plague Lord, the expansion opens up an all new Southern map as players discover that Lord Bane had a brother, and he's pissed. All this plus a new level cap of 60 and three new achievements, all for 700 Microsoft points. Thank goodness.

Alan Wake At TGS? "Not An Announcement"

Remember when we told you to pencil (yes, pencil) in upcoming Remedy title Alan Wake for the Tokyo Game Show? As Kotaku's own Mike McWhertor pointed out a mention that it would be at TGS appeared in a Windows branded contest that actually dates from last year. Over on the Alan Wake Forums, Remedy has posted:

The Microsoft Vista promotion referring to TGS took place in 2007, and is old news - we've had the winner over for taking the pictures already.

Sorry for the confusion and possible disappointment, but this was not an annoucement that Wake would be shown at TGS 2008. Remedy's team is just getting back from a bit of holiday and we haven't had time to chat with Microsoft on upcoming shows/showings yet.

Oh. Question: Then why didn't we see it at E3?

How far has Remedy comed on Alan Wake [Alan Wake via VG247]

Of Course, Capcom Wants Mega Man 9 Hard

When we were kids, Mega Man was a hard game. We died all the time. And when we were dying in Mega Man, we were dying in Mega Man. It was that hard. So when Capcom decided to make the multi-platform Mega Man 9, the company knew it had to make it hard. Says the game's producer Hironobu Takeshita:

Mega Man 9 is very hard. We didn't want to do Mega Man, but easy. We want players to get better, we want them to remember. I've always tried to challenge players, and I think there are gamers who miss being challenged by games.

We'd like to think so as well. Takeshita also expressed his interest in making more Wii titles, which is good news for Wii owners looking for a challenge.

The Xbox 360/Netflix deal may well be one of the more important things to come out of E3 last week. Streaming Netflix movies (at least for Americans) sure beats the Video Marketplace. Here, Microsoft's Larry Hryb takes us on a guided tour of the new service, including how quickly your 360 queue is updated once you make changes on a PC.

Portal: Still Alive was announced during E3 last week. It bundles the original Portal with some "additional content", and it's due for release on XBLA. And ever since, PC owners have been complaining, wondering why 360 owners are getting new stuff while they're not. Well, according to former Shacknews boss Chris Remo, the "additional content" isn't necessarily "new content", as he says the bonus maps are those found in Portal: The Flash Version MapPack. Which PC owners can already get. For free.

Portal: Still Alive explained [Remowned]