Borderline Unethical.

But I believe, tonight, we saw the true meaning of the term. With a two-hour showing barely raising a muted clap at Microsoft's press conference tonight, we were treated to a range of mediocre to decent to downright poor presentations for the XBOX. And the audience were responding to that - Harmonix's Dance Central the only game truly managing a rapturous cheer from the in-house audience. Until, of course, the sucker punch — the moneyhat if you will. "Hey, audience. Sorry you don't care about these games. We still want you to write nice things. Have an XBOX on us."

The biggest cheer of Microsoft's entire conference. Free XBOX 360 Slim's for every member of the audience. I can imagine a cool-headed Nintendo sitting back and thinking, "You know what, we've done all this. This isn't competitive. But how do you compete with the money-hat?" How, indeed. I can imagine Sony sitting, tense, watching on and pondering, "You know what, our motion controller can do this, and we have piles upon piles of core titles. We can compete with this. But how do you compete with the money-hat?"

The fact is folks, if Microsoft ended before the XBOX 360 giveaway, the response would be whole-heartedly negative. You're seeing it from the consumers — the people on NeoGaf and GiantBomb. That was a terrible Microsoft showing. Kinect's first-party titles were vastly outshined by the third-party games they showed. Granted - Ubisoft's fitness title, and Harmonix's dance title looked like world beaters. The latter in fact, has me concerned for the touted SingStar: Dance announcement tomorrow afternoon. Everything else - dull. A living room revolution? Hardly.

Starting with the core titles, everything Microsoft showed looked solid. But there was never that Uncharted 2 moment - that gasp ringing through the auditorium. It was colour-by-numbers. It was Halo, it was Gears Of War and it looked good. But it didn't look defining.

And honestly, it had to. Why? Because that's pretty much where Microsoft's interaction with the audience actually sitting back to watch E3 ended. Even those in the crowd sounded muted. Did some of Kinect's interaction look solid? Of course - the movement around the car render was decent, and the voice control stuff was relatively impressive. But the crowd remained hushed throughout.

Then the rapturous announcement. "Here's the XBOX 360 Slim - have one for free." For the first time the auditorium exploded. For the first time the noise-levels matched that of a Zelda announcement. For the first time, the audience was engaged.

But the audience was not engaged in the true spectacle of the announcement. This wasn't an acknowledgement of a quality experience, a graphical masterpiece or a revolution (like Microsoft has oft-teased with their Natal build-up). This was a response to a freebie. A competition. A hand-me down.

It was a get out of jail free card for Microsoft. An acknowledgement of a lacklustre showcase and a way to save it. Well bravo Microsoft, you just bought the games press.

I hear that Microsoft E3 showcase was pretty awesome. Wink.

“Twiggy” is an anonymous PushSquare columnist who has been spotted in three major cities across the globe. It’s rumoured he’s on the run from the British monarchy who accused him of treason.