by Ben Silverman

Of the three consoles, Microsoft's green machine had arguably the best showing at E3 2003. In addition to the price drop announcement (now retailing for $179 bucks), they even came out of the gates first with a press conference on Monday night, again trumping Sony and Nintendo. Though there was far too much fanboy cheering for my stoic, grumpy blood, I have to admit being wowed by more than a few of the games shown during the conference. And nothing was more wowing than Halo 2.

Dual guns. Jumping onto a moving Phantom. Huge outdoor environments. Human allies helping you out. The new bits are all there and all look pretty cool, but that's no surprise. This is the sequel to Halo, after all, currently the only true killer-app for the system.

But it won't stay like that for long. Even before showing off Halo 2, Microsoft announced that Doom III was going to come out for the Xbox. Say goodbye to first-person shooting on the other consoles, people.

The Xbox joy didn't end there, though. In fact, some of the best games at the show were Xbox exclusives. Take Peter Molyneux's Fable, formerly called Project Ego. We've been stoked on this one for years now, and it finally looks like it's coming together. Your character ages - we all know that already - but what we didn't know was that the world is constantly shifting its feelings about you based on your actions. Kill some monsters in the woods alone and it's no big deal; kill the same monsters in front of a crowd of people and you'll gain fame, recognition and perhaps even a free pint at the local pub. Then, you can start a bar fight. Is this a game or my Saturday night?

Another Molyneux baby, BC, had a great showing. You control a tribe of cavemen just trying to survive in a land teeming with toothy animal types hell-bent on making you their next buffet. The world is very interactive and operates on a complex AI system. Need to get rid of some pesky Velociraptors? Well, you can whack at them with your club, but a better idea is to use boulders to block their path to the river, thus shutting off their water supply and leading to death by dehydration. Ringo Starr, eat your heart out.

Microsoft had even more cool first-party games, such as Rareware's Kameo: Elements of Power, True Fantasy Live Online and the online fragfest Conker: Live & Uncut. Whoever said Microsoft should stick to hardware should start preparing a nice broth for the words they'll be eating.

Xbox support was all over the convention center, solidifying the console's place a real player. Full Spectrum Warrior from THQ was a surprise hit, a strategy/action military squad deal built on a very cool engine. We were particularly psyched about Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders from NC Soft, another strategy /action hybrid that looks to combine the best elements of Kessen and Dynasty Warriors into a medieval stew of mayhem.

The only real bummer was the no-show of Psychonauts, one of last year's big winners and a definite earmark on my to-do list. I guess they got stuck in traffic.

With continued Xbox Live support all around, the system looks poised to make up some ground on the PS2, at least in terms of cool games. Will it ever match Sony's sales? Not in my lifetime, but that doesn't mean Xbox owners shouldn't be proud of the way the system looked at E3.

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