Xbox 360 Retailer Launch Crashing

Hey everyone I had a very interesting night last night, as you all probably know the Xbox 360 launch is upon us and as one of those special VIP pack owners I was invited to a gaming night at the Athenaeum theatre in Melbourne.

Finally, I thought Microsoft were doing something to reward the people who exhibited their dedication to this new console, alas I was mistaken the night it's self was great I got to play a whole host of awesome new XB360 titles and now I'm even more impatient for the next 13 days to fly by that I was originally. There was however a very major lack of freebies at the event, what happened to the days when MS would give out mound of free stuff to anyone who passed? but this isn't the real issue I had with last night. My problem with last night is that the "VIP" event was simply tacked on to a retailer launch event. How do I know this you ask well as I was quite happily playing perfect dark zero I began to notice that the VIP's were being asked to leave, not wanting to stop in the middle of a level I decided to wait until I was asked to leave. This didn't happen eventually an announcement came over that the main presentation was about to start. I thought I'd take my chances and try and sneak into this as well and with out any thought I was welcomed in with open arms, and the presentation that followed was awesome (but I'll get to that latter).
Now I don't have a problem with MS combining 2 events because obviously this is more cost effective, but if your going to put on an event for your so called VIP's you should probably make them feel somewhat special not just give them a chance to play the games that they could probably make their way down to Target to play. Now enough of my complaining, on to what I got to check out last night, so obviously I got to play most of the launch games for XB360

• Quake 4


• Perfect Dark Zero


• Kameo Elements of Power


• Ridge Racer 6


• Project Gotham 3


• Full Auto


• Condemned


• NBA 2k6


• GUN


• Tony Hawk


• King Kong


• Fight Night


• Call of Duty 2

Most of these games were obviously very pretty, however not all which is kinda disappointing but understandable, not everyone can take advantage of the power contained within the white box. The upside is that there isn't anything like Fusion Frenzy on the launch list.
As for some of the features I spotted in the presentation the wireless range of their controllers is awesome I watched the presenter walk to around 10-15 meters from the console and still the controller was as responsive as a wired one.

It was also pretty cool to see the integration between USB devices and the Xbox things like plugging in an MP3 player (not just an IPOD) and playing the music directly while in a game, or viewing Photos on a digital camera. Now I know you avid gamers out there probably aren’t really fazed that you can use your Xbox as a slide show machine for showing those vital pictures of your parent’s trip to Guatemala, but this may help you to get them sold on the idea of forking out the big bucks :o)

All in all I’m more excited now about the launch of this console than I was a day ago and with only 13 days to go you be prepared for more Xbox 360 posts. I’ll also do my best to put up some pretty pics when I get my new baby (don’t expect too much as I’ll probably loose track of time playing PDZ)


Until then hopefully you can make out some of the excitement from the pics