Thursday, May 12, 2005

Xbox 360 MTV Special

Well, the Xbox 360 MTV special is over.

I wanted to write about the show right away, but I had to take a long shower to GET THE STUPID OFF OF ME.

How bad was it? As bad as you can possibly imagine. The word "pathetic" comes to mind. And I blame Steve Ballmer. This show was so un-anything-cool that it has Ballmer's monkey dance stamped all over it. Last year, I wrote this about Steve Ballmer:
Dude, when you start hopping around on stage like a gorilla, you become a spork: not quite human, not quite gorilla. Both humans and gorillas will then despise you. When you retire to spend more time with your half-ape, half-man family, you will be despised by inhabitants of both zoos and golf courses. You become a man without a species.

He's my number one suspect. Only a half-ape, half-man could have orchestrated this thirty minute abomination of idiocy. My I.Q. was dropping a point a minute just watching the damn thing.

Here's a timeline:
0:00-1:00. Introduction.

1:00-1:30. Some hooker swinging down the aisle with a shoulder bag. A bunch of people who are too good-looking to be serious gamers are having simulated orgasms over the shoulder bag. She opens the bag and puts the Xbox 360 on a pedestal. Then she turns it on. From the look on her face, it took her a week to remember where the "on" button was located.

1:30-2:00 Elijah Woods, who is eighteen inches tall, introduces a band--"The Killers."

2:00-5:30 The Killers play a song.

5:30-10:00 Commercials.

10:00-15:00 Some guys from Pimp My Ride show up to customize the Xbox. At this point, the show cannot be distinguished from torture, and I confess to both kidnapping the Lindbergh baby and having a secret affection for Canadians.

At some point in this five minute block of sheer hell, about thirty seconds of game footage is shown. Game footage, cut scenes--no one can tell.

15:00-19:00 Commercials. Thank goodness. Commercials for femine hygeine products sound like Masterpiece Freaking Theatre compared to the actual program.

20:00-27:00 Three "professional" gamers go to the UK to test out Perfect Dark Zero. One of them is a girl whose vocabulary seems to be limited to two phrases: "Bring it on" and "Bitch!" I can teach a parrot more words than that in two days, and I don't even have a damn parrot.

After we see the Rare studioes and actually get a crumb of information (character models have 5K polygons, backgrounds have 100-300K), it's off to the deathmatch between the three teams who all look like they have a second career making Sprite commercials.

27:00-30:00 What better way to end this steaming pile than another song from The Killers? Xbox 360 rocks, man!

For a company that did everything right for months, Microsoft really puked all over itself with that "unveiling." Anybody wants to buy an Xbox 360 because of that show is too stupid to drive themselves to a store. I doubt that it matters--E3 is where the rubber meets the road--but I doubt that Microsoft employees will be high-fiving tomorrow. And if I was in the marketing department, I'd go on a leave of absence. Immediately.

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