In a span of a week, Xbox and PlayStation recently held their Holiday Preview Events in Toronto. The atmosphere at the two events was distinctively unique that offered a different vibe.

Microsoft held their event at the fancy and spacious ‘This is London Club’ and offered a more social atmosphere. In contrast, Sony held their event in two large rooms encompassing a simple setting that allowed the focus to be put on the only thing that mattered: the games. Although I roughly spent the same amount of time at both events, I felt I had seen everything I wanted to see at the Xbox event. Comparatively, I would have liked to have spent a few more hours at the PlayStation event.

One of the reasons why I did not feel the need to spend more time at Xbox’s event was because they had multiple TVs for each game. On the other hand Sony only had one TV assigned to each game. This mainly came into effect for games with hands off walkthroughs. For the most part Microsoft had multiple teams for developer walkthroughs as well which shortened the required wait time.

The second reason I wanted to spend more time at Sony’s event is that I personally preferred the line up of games at that event. In contrast I was a little disappointed to see that Microsoft used a lot of space for games that had already been released. They had eight large screen TVs for Halo ODST (which had been a week old before by then), a stage for Rock Band: Beetles and even had NHL 10 on display. The only 2010 game Microsoft had on display was Splinter Cell: Conviction. The two exclusives from Microsoft, ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony’ and ‘L4D2’ were games that were not that different from what we had seen before. To be fair though, the events were meant to preview games for the Holiday season so the focus should have been on games that would be available by the end of 2009.

The different line-ups can also be explained by the different strategies the companies might be using. Microsoft was probably putting more focus on current games to increase their game sales. With the recent price drop and introduction of the PS3 Slim, Sony was probably putting more focus on the upcoming games to show that buying a PS3 was a good investment and thus increase their console sales. At the end of the day, both companies held great events and achieved what they had wanted to.

Find our impressions of the games present at Microsoft’s event here.

Find our hands on experience with God of War 3 here.

Games Present at Xbox Holiday Preview Event:

Tony Hawk: RIDE

DJ Hero

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Splinter Cell: Conviction

The Ballad of Gay Tony

Halo 3: ODST

Forza 3

Rock Band: The Beetles

Left 4 Dead 2

NHL 10

Serious Sam HD

Fall Dashboard Upgrade (Twitter, Facebook and Zune)

Games Present at Sony Holiday Preview Event:

God of War 3

Heavy Rain

Uncharted 2

Mod Nation Racers

The Saboteur

Tony Hawk: RIDE

DJ Hero

Lego Rock Band

Assassin’s Creed 2

Army of Two: The 40^th Day

Avatar: The Game

Tekken 6

Dead to Rights: Retribution

Katamari Forever

SOCOM (PSP)