So Microsoft’s press conference just happened, and I think it blew everybody away. With its terribleness. Their “hardcore” section at the beginning showed already announced games with nothing surprising, and then they blew into their Kinect casual awfulness. While the entire show was really bad and embarrassing, and because Riddlethos.com is not really the place for up-to-date e3 news, I thought I’d highlight the absolute worst 3 moments of Microsoft’s 2010 press conference.

3 – Skittles
To be completely honest, Kinectimals doesn’t look all terrible. Just in the sense that the tiger was adorable and the technology seems impressive. Still, I didn’t care about Nintendogs, and so I don’t care about Kinectimals. Why this moment qualifies for a top 3 finish is because of the pure ridiculousness of cutting to a small child saying “Skittles” over and over again. The kid and the tiger were cute, but I found myself wondering – not for the first or last time I should add – what happened to the gaming culture I used to know and love. I’ve already let Nintendo slip out of my heart, do I have no hardcore haven anymore?

2 – The Dancing, Oh Boy the Dancing…
While most of the other Kinect games didn’t look terrible for what they were – Nintendo games in HD – one title in particular, did. I forget what it’s called, but it doesn’t matter. It was awkward dancing that looks like it’s trying to be Dance Dance Revolution but without the gaming skill element, and so completely exposing the nerdiness of 95% of the people who play games. And Microsoft apparently didn’t want to hide that fact, so they got a nerdy white boy to talk about how he’s now an amazing dancer because of this game. Then he proceeded to dance poorly along with the music. This wasn’t the worst part though, it was when the two people in the background were spectating but then were just so into the dancing that they just had to join in! HOW EXCITING! I winced. A lot. And I went to a music theatre high school.

Would have much preferred this

1 – Worst Use of Twins Ever
Man, at least we had Felicia Day last year. She was nervous, yes, but it was a likeable presentation that made Twitter and Facebook demonstrations a bit less painful. This year Microsoft decided to take all the focus away from the actually pretty cool video chat technology and instead inserted in the most painfully executed script I’ve heard in a while. Some chick was talking about how Kinect is going to change everybody’s life and people were just starting to tune out when she mentioned her twin sister. Then people perked up. She called her sister, but before anybody in the audience could begin to conjure their teenaged perverted twin fantasies, they started the most awkward conversation in English history. It was so contrived, so forced, so uncomfortable that I almost couldn’t believe it was happening. It was that bad, even for the already obviously scripted conversations.

So that was my, er, bottom 3. What about you guys?