Today we had Microsoft’s press conference and some kind-of-related Rock Band 2 action. Pretty much all of it is dumb.

Gears of War 2 in early November

You knew this already, if you’d been paying attention to the Feed-o-Nets. But we also learned that the new Gears will include a five-player online co-op mode called Horde, in which you and your mates will fight off wave after wave of enemies. That could be fun.

Redesigned dashboard for the 360; Mii-like avatars

I didn’t have a huge problem with the “blade” design of the old (read: current) 360 dashboard, but it was never easy to find what you wanted. If that’s the new design over there to the right, I’m not sure it’s an improvement.

Microsoft has also given us avatars, for some reason. Not sure why that was necessary, but at least the children on XBL will now be able to harass you based on your appearance as well as your effeminate voice.

What is cool: Multi-person voice chat and a couple other “Live Party” features. Too bad I’ll never use any of that.

Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5, Geometry Wars Whatever, Fable 2, Final Fantasy XIII

Don’t care.

You’re In The Movies

Really?

Streaming stuff from Netflix, NBC/Universal movies and TV on XBLM

Another kind-of neat feature I’ll never use: Being able to watch a Netflix movie with the people in your Live Party. All the studios could add their entire catalogs to the XBLM and I still wouldn’t care. Humbug.

Rock Band 2 official track list

Not bad. There are some songs on there I’d prefer never to play (Linkin Park’s “One Step Closer”), but there are more I genuinely like. So that’s positive. I do wish we’d get a straight answer about RB1 on-disc songs in RB2, though. Five dollars to “export” “most” songs to the new game sounds good, but why only most? And what can’t be exported?