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By Jeremy Azevedo

I’m sure many people were expecting to see Microsoft debut a 1st party motion controller today, due to the week long speculation surrounding the lightsaber-esque peripheral known as the “Darwin”.

Despite the fact that this turned out to be untrue, that didn’t stop Nintendo from making an official announcement the day before their actual press conference regarding a new controller add-on that promises to provide the Wiimote with absolutely accurate 1:1 virtual response. Wait, what?

I don’t know about you, but I already shelled out 40 bucks apiece for the goddamn Wiimotes and 20 bucks more for the nunchuck, which already pisses me off. Factor in the Wii charging stations and you’ve got the world’s most needlessly expensive controller. So why in the hell would I want to pay another 20-30 dollars for another add-on designed to make my Wiimote do what it was supposed to already do in the first place? Go fuck yourself Nintendo. You better show me a new Kid Icarus or something equally rad tomorrow or we’re not friends anymore.

So what did Microsoft debut today? There were a couple of presentations for eagerly awaited multi-platform games like Resident Evil 5, fallout 3, Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 (more on those later). Exclusive titles Fable 2 and Gears of War 2 were also shown, although I always felt Gears was sort of the poor man’s Halo, so I couldn’t get that excited about it. I am super pumped about Fable 2 though, the original was one of my favorite games of the last generation, and I expect more of the same from the sequel.

The big news from Microsoft was that Final Fantasy XIII would be exclusive to the 360, which is a big surprise due to the fact that Final Fantasy has long been exclusive to Sony (and before that, Nintendo). Microsoft seems to be serious about developing an RPG following on their machine, something that has long been the Playstation’s secret weapon in the hardcore gaming market. But you know what game I was most excited about? Lips. Feel free to throw away your crappy Singstar collection, as Lips will allow you to upload and sing to any song in your personal collection. Sounds too rad to be true but that’s their claim. Ama-shizzle-azing.

Finally, Microsoft officially announced the partnership everybody already knew was coming with Netflix. In the very near future, Netflix users will be able to download and watch movies directly to their Xbox360 with the push of a couple of buttons. Instant entertainment just took an evolutionary leap forward. Oh, and Microsoft Live will have a stylish new interface to go along with it.

Guitar Hero World Tour Didn’t reveal too much that we don’t already know, other than that Van Halen and The Eagles would be exclusive, and that Metallica’s new album, “Death Magnetic” will be available in full as DLC. What does Rock Band 2 have to say about that?

Quite a bit, actually, as the entire Rock Band 2 set list was revealed today, and it’s impressive. You can view the entire list HERE if you so desire, but I’ll point out a couple of the more noteworthy ones here. AC/DC’s “Let There Be Rock” marks the band’s first appearance in a rhythm action game, as does Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue”. For those of you that still don’t believe Chinese Democracy is coming soon, word is that a new Guns N’ Roses song off that album, “Shackler’s Revenge” is going to be included as well. A few other exciting newcomers to the Rock Band world are the Steve Miller Band, beck, Devo, Testament, Jethro Tull, Foo Fighters, Elvis Costello, Modest Mouse, The Who and The Guess Who.