I just got back from a Microsoft Live! Event held in Grand Rapids. I attend these as often as I can, since they often showcase new PC products that are coming out in the near future, but mainly because Microsoft always hands out something free, and I’m a sucker for freebies. Tonight’s bonus bag included the PC action/flight sim Crimson Skies and a Microsoft Game Plus! Pack… I’m not sure what that last one is, and it’ll probably never get anywhere near my hard disk, but there was another reason for attending tonight’s show. The very last thing the demonstrator talked about was the impending launch of X-Box.

We sat through the same demos you’ve probably seen either in print mags or streaming video off the net – the room full of mouse traps and ping pong balls, and the garden of 1000 butterflies making a giant "X." And, of course, we also saw the big dancing robot being controlled by the buff military-looking chick. That’s all nice, but nobody is impressed by CG tech demos any more, and despite what Microsoft is trying to tell you, that robot demo IS CG, not real-time, there’s no doubt in my mind. The only new bit of propaganda I learned about these tech demos is that Microsoft wants us to believe that the mouse trap and butterfly demos used only about 30% of the system’s potential, and the dancing robot used just 50%. Forgive my skepticism, but we’ve all heard that one before… <cough Tekken Tag cough>… and we’ll believe it when we actually play a game on the system.

Also, Microsoft was pushing a new marketing slogan that could end up biting them back next year – "Superior Games from Day One." I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen a lot of system launches, and right up through PS2, they’ve all had their share of craptacular launch titles, and I seriously doubt that X-Box is going to be any different.

Finally, and this last bit might be the result of misinformation on the part of the young lady hosting tonight’s event, but it was stated that the system will ship with four controllers. I assumed that this was a mistake and that she meant to say "four controller ports," but during the question and answer session, someone asked about it and she reiterated that X-Box will have four controllers out of the box. She even pantomimed holding onto a controller as she said it. Hey, I hope this is true – I tried to verify it on the official X-Box site, but I couldn’t get the page to load… anyway, if it is true, I think it’s a brilliant decision. Hey, remember the days when you’d buy a new game system and it’d actually come packed with a game? How come it seems that game companies have been giving us less and less with new systems lately? I know, it’s ostensibly to keep prices down, but really, it’s because they want to gouge the consumer by forcing a 1-1 sale of a new system and at least one game, and then force them to shell out more moolah for extra controllers… one company hasn’t gotten with the times and still wants you to pay $30 for a multi-tap because they refused to put four controller ports on their latest system. So, if MS is going to give you four controllers in the box, I think it’s great – about time a game company gave its customers a little extra right off the bat.

I’m far from jumping onboard the X-Box wagon… as far as I’m concerned, all the system is at this point is a set of tech demos which may or may not have actually been created on X-Box hardware, a list of first and third parties who have begun game development, and one unsubstantiated rumor about how many controllers it’ll ship with. Let’s just say that, with the exception of the four controllers announcement, X-Box still has a lot of ground to cover to get from Seattle, Washington to my wallet. Time to start showing the goods, Bill.