…and we're not talking about the journalists. Gavin Ogden gives us a quick precis of his morning trawling the pods at XO5.

I'm an Xbox b*tch, but even the most rabid PlayStation fanboy would be utterly unable to say 'these games look rubbish'.



The fact is, they look amazing. Okay, so we're seeing them in hi-definition courtesy of some great TV kit from Samsung, but that doesn't take away the facts. The Xbox 360 games launch line-up looks crisp and colorful in ways we simply haven't experienced before.

The flip-side of that is that, apart from visuals, there's very little here that's especially new or innovative. I played Dead or Alive 4 for a while and, apart from being helplessly in love with the crisp details, found it pretty much plays like Ultimate DoA. Granted; this was based on five minutes of gameplay. Likewise, FIFA: Road to World Cup is basically a great looking FIFA game.

We're here to play

The consensus among the journalists here is that this has been a success for Microsoft, although probably not a triumph. We already knew how much Xbox 360 is going to cost, we knew the technology involved and when it will be arriving. The fact that there wasn't much to announce last night isn't a big problem.

We're here to see the games and to play them and I think a few people have been pleasantly surprised by just how many games are playable and obviously pretty close to completion.

There's some concern about the final launch line-up but I don't think it's as big an issue as all that. Most people will be buying two or three games at launch, and of those, I'd say the vast majority will plump for Perfect Dark Zero and Project Gotham 3.

If there is such a thing, PDZ (pictured) is the game of the show, although I should stress that it's basically a really good looking first-person-shooter. PG3 is fast; I mean extremely fast.

While we're on the subject of good-looking games, Tiger Woods is something pretty special. The screenshots don't do it justice.

Journalists and zombies

A lot of journos here are talking about Capcom's Dead Rising. It looks like a zombie movie and has loads of great comedy touches. Unlike most games of this sort, it's free roaming. You can expect to hear a lot more about it in post-XO5 reports.

This XO5 is basically a gathering of the gorgeous. Great looking games that play along tried and tested lines. There are worse ways to launch a console.

Gavin Ogden is editor-in-chief of the UK Official Xbox Magazine.