Bright and earlier Saturday morning Kevin and myself where making a 2 hour trek to Richmond VA for this year's Microsoft eXtreme event. When we arrived at the event, which was in the Holiday Inn, we had to sign in and were giving a goodie bag filled with Microsoft XP stuff. (Not a good sign.) As we walked into the banquet hall all we could see were chairs, a couple of TVs and a giant screen in front. (Once again, not a good sign) We found a couple seats in the back, an as soon as we sat down the event started.
Man, was I disappointed, the whole event ended up being mostly about Windows XP and Office XP. (Which by the way are both some kick ass software.) But when they did get around to talking about the Xbox in the last 10 mins of a 2 hour event. A movie was shown with some in game footage of the following:

<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=17" target="_blank">Oddworld</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=99" target="_blank">Bloodwake</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=117" target="_blank">Enclave</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=94" target="_blank">Air Force Delta</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=73" target="_blank">Azurik</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=74" target="_blank">Nightcaster</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=65" target="_blank">NFL Fever</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=9" target="_blank">Tony Hawk 2x</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=64" target="_blank">Project Gotham</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=63" target="_blank">Amped</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=66" target="_blank">Fuzion Frenzy</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=114" target="_blank">Obi-Wan</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=86" target="_blank">Mad Dash</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=113" target="_blank">4x4 Evolution 2</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xboxaddict.com/products/product.php?Product_ID=124" target="_blank">Nascar Heat</A>

After the movie, product manager Steve Fowler gave a demonstration of two titles, Amped and Project Gotham. Both of the games looked amazing, but Project Gotham won my heart and that is very hard for a racing game to do, since I'm not the biggest racing game fan.
The main reason for my crush for Gotham was that the graphics were outstanding and how much detail was put into making the surroundings. One other thing I thought was kind of neat was the Kudos scoring. As we watched Steve race his Ferrari around New York, in the top right hand corner
you could see his Kudos score going up. That little scoring system was grading him on how well he looked while driving, such as going around a corner on two wheels or bringing the rear of his car out wide with out crashing. (Cool, huh!?)
Soon after the demostration of Gotham was over, pretty much the whole eXtreme event was too. So Kevin and myself piled back into his truck and headed back home to Lynchburg feeling a little cheated!

So what did you think of the Microsoft eXtreme event?

[Edited by Chris on 06-03-2001 at 02:32 PM]