Leipzig Update – Day 1

We're all tired and heading to bed (it'a almost 1am here), but I wanted to give a quick update about how the day was going.
 
8:00 am
We started this morning with a quick ride to the conference center the swanky XBOX360 van.  The Leipziger Messe is pretty close and really an amazing sight to behold.  Here is a picture:

 
 
8:30 am 
We set up the room and checked all the connections one more time.  Everything seems in order and we had 10 minutes to spare so we decide to have a quick shot of espresso before the fun begins.  We took that coffee on the outdoor patio:

 
 
9:00 am 
Our first demo started promptly at 9:00 and we did 4.5 hours back to back (4 people at 30 minutes each) and finally got 20 minutes for a lunch break. Honestly it went by so quickly that nobody was that hungry or realized how long we had been going.  The feedback was amazing and the strategy-crazy German press was being convinced one by one that a strategy game could work on the console.  Time will tell, but the feedback was consistent and clear.  We want/need Halo Wars now!

1:40 pm - Lunch time
We had a quick lunch at the kitchen (Spatzel and soup I think) and during that lunch Graeme got pulled away for his first TV interview with MTV. We are still trying to track down when and where this will be aired in Europe.  However, the interview went awesome and it was great to see them come to the MS booth just to see Halo Wars.

2:00 pm
The rest of us went back to doing non-stop demos until 5:30 pm (Graeme rejoined us after 30 minutes.)  The feedback was once again consistent and we heard some great feedback. 

The controls were extremely well, received with everyone that played having a great time.

5:30 pm
Here we had the second of our specialty interviews.  This time we let Graeme loose on the European XBOX insider guys.  A nice video interview ensued with Graeme knocking questions out of the park.  This stuff should show up on XBOX live in both Europe and the States sometime soon.
 
6:00 pm
Here we had our final demo of the day and a chance for the PR team to come tell us that we were the most requested game at the front desk (we are behind closed doors at Leipzig so you need an appointment.)  That was pretty cool to know and so we headed back to the XBOX van with smiles on our faces and German biers on our minds.