With E3 drawing to a close and MyMedia ending its extensive E3 coverage (lulz), I thought I would do a run through of the three major conferences held at E3 and give my opinion on each. I thought that, overall, E3 was OK this year. There was a shock in the form of FFXIII coming to 360 and first gameplay footage of Resident Evil 4.5…I mean 5, and there were plenty of screenshots and videos to keep us busy throughout the few days of the LA conference.
While E3 is known for its gameplay previews, videos and screens, the conferences of the three major console players – Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo – by far generate the most attention. If I were to rate E3 purely on the combined effort of the three companies during their conferences, I would give E3 a big fat F, mainly because Nintendo and Microsoft were so uneventful, with Sony having a nicely prepared and colourful presentation, only to whore the PSP like no tomorrow.
Microsoft was up first at the perfect time of 3:30am on Tuesday morning, and I was looking forward to a new Halo announcement and some solid Banjo-Kazooie footage. The later was shown, albeit very minimally, and Bungie pulled out at the last second to save their announcement for a “bigger” event. “Ouch” for the E3 organisers for that one.
Microsoft started off their conference by showing off sales figures and talking about some upcoming beasts that are being released later this year, namely Gears 2 and Fable 2. The Fallout 3 trailer was encouraging but anyone outside anywhere in Australia at around 3:42am on Tuesday morning would have heard a strange moaning sound in the air caused by the thousands, if not millions, of geeks suddenly becoming depressed at the thought of the game being banned here.
In what was relatively ironic, Todd Howard of Bethesda’s controller disconnected while trying to play Fallout 3, making everyone let out a little giggle, probably because of the unintentional reference to the 360’s hardware failure’s.
Resident Evil 5 was shown with a new trailer and some snippets of gameplay that make the game look like Resident Evil 4 but on steroids. I mentioned in the forums something along the lines of, “the gameplay looks identical to RE4’s”, with a member replying with, “would you rather it go back to RE’s old gameplay style?” I guess that’s a fair comment, as RE4 is by far the best in the series and was one of the best games of last generation. It looks promising, and online co-op mode I guess could work. The only query I have is how the weapon changing system is going to work. In previous RE games, you have to pause and choose a new weapon. If you do that when you’re engaged in combat with another person, is the game also paused for them, or does the person who paused merely become inactive and invisible until they come back?
There was the Fable 2 co-op system (which is inventive and original), as well as the awesome Gears 2 trailer and announcement of the 7th November release date.
Probably the biggest statement of the conference was Don Mattrick’s claim that the 360 will outsell the PS3 this generation, which I sincerely doubt will happen based on current sales trends.
Microsoft announced their new dashboard interface, full with Mii’s…I mean avatar’s that have been created by RARE. It seemed a big deal that the developer had created them, even though they don’t really look all that inventive, especially considering Mii’s look the same and have been around for a few years now.
“You’re in the Movies” looks terrible and incredibly gimmicky, so it probably belongs on the Wii (ba-da ching!).
Lips looks great and looks set to challenge Singstar, especially with its Zune and iTunes integration.
However, the biggest announcement of them all was the announcement by Square Enix to bring Final Fantasy XIII to XBOX 360, which caused havoc among Playstation fanboys who seem to think that exclusives becoming cross-platform titles is worse then the Holocaust.
What I find to be completely and utterly hilarious is the fact that the game is still going to be an exclusive in Japan, which pretty much shows that Microsoft have given up in the land of the rising sun, at least with the 360.
Overall, Microsoft’s event wasn’t so much uneventful as it had a few cool announcements and showings, but it wasn’t a great presentation. It didn’t flow well and it even seemed like the Square Enix announcement was put together at the last minute.
Microsoft seem to be becoming the new Nintendo at their conferences, where they make announcements, pause while expecting a big applause, only to be met with silence. That’s happened to Nintendo a countless number of times (also most notably to Sony with “Riiiiidge Racerrrrr”).
Nintendo was next and anyone who was awake during the conference and saw my posts on MyWii will know how I felt about that. You could go without ever watching that conference and it wouldn’t make a difference, because it was terribly dull. The Wii Music demonstration is going to be mocked, capped and photoshopped for years as it is by far the most unintentionally hilarious presentation ever. Period.
It seemed like they were giving a presentation to 5 year olds instead of the media. I was embarrassed for them.
The biggest announcement was the announcement of GTA: Chinatown Wars on DS, with Reggie claiming that that should be enough to keep casual gamers at play. I don’t consider myself “casual”, but I’m sure most casual gamers would expect at least some screens and/or footage of the game, not just a logo.
It’s not that I dislike Nintendo. I can acknowledge that without Nintendo, god knows what the industry would be like. However, it has seemed like, for the past 4-5 years, that they have been TELLING gamers what they want, instead of heading their calls. I’m critical of die-hard Nintendo fans, because they very rarely can debate and admit that the Wii is a console that insults the veteran gamer, for which most of the gaming public consists of. Remember, the average age of gamers in Australia is 28, not the age and/or demographic that Nintendo is aiming the Wii at.
Their conference was bad on a lot of levels. Firstly, it failed to even connect with casual gamers, let alone hardcore gamers. Animal Crossing is a great franchise, but hardly one worth making a selling point out of. Wii Sports and Wii Music are great also, but the gaming public isn’t stupid. They know that these games are directed at the LCD (lowest common denominator), or the demographic known as “non-gamers”. Nintendo are somewhat cheating and creating a market that is easy to sell too, selling a console that is cheap to manufacture and leaving the hardcore fans that still support it in the lurch. Where is the RE4-esque title, or the Eternal Darkness sequel? Will Timesplitters re-appear on a Nintendo console? It’s easy to say that Mario and Zelda teams are hard at work, but we all know the strength of these departments, and it would be naïve and ignorant to expect another full-blown Mario or Zelda title this generation. My belief is that we will see a brand new Mario spin-off sporting title.
Overall, Nintendo delivered a terrible performance. The Wii will continue to sell like hotcakes, purely because the market it’s aimed at probably wasn’t watching that horrendous and laughable conference.
Sony’s conference was impressive, even if it didn’t have any major announcements. It was perfectly demonstrated and it flowed well and actually kept me entertained, which is hard when you’re on about 2 hours of sleep over 48 hours.
Jack Tretton showed off the new Resistance 2 trailer, which was very cinematic and looked fantastic. Resistance was a great FPS and out-did its expectations as a launch title. Very rarely do you see a launch title still hold up almost 2 years into a consoles lifetime.
LittleBigPlanet is going to be an inventive and entertaining title, and may even fight for GOTY honours. It looks brilliant.
A “Greatest Hits” (or “Platinum”, as it’s known here) range is coming for Playstation 3. Reduced games! Woohoo!
A new Ratchet and Clank game exclusively for PSN on PS3 was a slight surprise, and while it looked exactly like TOD, both graphically and gameplay wise, its length looks to justify its cheap pricing. It looks like a must-have, especially for fans of the series.
The launch of the video download system on PSN was exciting, especially the announcement that it would go live that night, but Australia and Europe are left out in the lurch. Thank you very much, Sony!
The PSP got a lot of time on stage, with a few new titles coming this year, including Patapon 2 and a new third-person Resistance title. Thank god they realised that the PSP is no good for FPS and turned the gameplay perspective around.
The conference ended with a trailer to the new MMO “MAG: Massive Action Game”, which sounds good. No gameplay was shown, but the trailer was intense and fast with lost of action and explosions. Here’s hoping the experience is as good as the trailer.
Overall, the Sony conference was cool, sleek and entertaining. It flowed well and didn’t tease like Microsoft and Nintendo’s conferences.
There’s no doubt that Sony gave the better presentation. Microsoft showed off a few little surprises but didn’t really excite, while Nintendo made utter fools of themselves.
Submitted by Gaetano
19/07/2008
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