Peter's E3 Wrap-up!
Nintendo had stolen the pre-show press by announcing a the new (rather divisive) name for their console as the Wii. As Sony and Microsoft struggled to hype their pre-shows but the media focused entirely on the what the heck the 'Wii' thing was all about. This strategy paid off as clearly the media had its eye on what the hell Nintendo was up to and Nintendo delivered stealing the show with some impressive demonstrations, a bunch of surprises, and by second day had by-far the longest lines (4-6 hours or more) and the most excited responses. The wait for the equally-sized Sony and Microsoft booths was a five minute wait or less [Video of the Wii Line]. With E3 over the general consensus seems to be that Nintendo stole the show, Sony shot themselves in the foot, and Microsoft did pretty good although didn't have anything amazing. Microsoft had nothing new to show for the XBox 360 except a weak Halo 3 trailer. Microsoft still had a pretty good showing detailing many games that look really quite good, and some like BioShock that look amazing but that I'll be playing on my PC.
Nintendo thankfully had a very strong and very positive presentation. While no price-point was named to counteract Sony's bombshell, the rumored $250 price remains unconfirmed. Such a price would be above what many consider to be the 'sweet spot' for a console that Nintendo is hoping to engage a new market of untapped casual gamers with, people who also will probably find spending $50 on a video game to be 'too much', which is where the Virtual Console comes in. Luckily, Nintendo seems to understand the untapped market for cheap, simple games and is taking the Virtual Console very seriously and not just as a side-feature. Still, Nintendo needs to be very careful to keep price-conscious consumers in mind because most of these people aren't going to make gaming a primary expense, like most hardcore gamers do.
Sony suffered the most at E3 and have the most to lose for it, so I'm going to spend most of the space talking about it. Sony. Wow, did they ever flub things up. At their presentations they continued espouse the value of graphics and its importance on games while talking about how BluRay is going to change the way we live and breathe. Sony presentations have always been mantras. Then they dropped the bomb. The $600 bomb shell.
Sony deciding to rub salt and vinegar in their wound announced their previously hyped "revolutionary" feature: a tilt sensor. Quickly people accused Sony of stealing Nintendo's ideas, but let's not forget the Wii controller has more then just tilt sensors, it senses movement, and where and how the controller is moving in a room. A mere tilt sensor is pretty pathetic, and hardly 'revolutionary', given all the other aspects of the Wii controller which arguably are revolutionary since the open up an incredible amount of game-play possibilities. Even more amusing was that the feature was thrown in at the last minute (A first-party studio was given the controllers a week before E3 and told to design their game around it), although Sony claims to have totally already had the idea since like, umm 1994. So either Sony has no idea what non-disclosure agreements are or they decided they needed to steal a little of Nintendo's thunder to be able to call the PS3 'revolutionary'.
It's pretty clear the PS3, while an incredible machine, is struggling with a serious lack of direction which is noticeable from its constantly fluctuating feature set and it's poor borrowing of features. It's trying to be a next-generation gaming machine - No wait, a BluRay DVD player - No, it's a media hub/router/media controller/PVR/HDeverythingintheworldmachine! The past has shown that when companies try to foist an unfocused strategy into one machine, trying to make the device do as many things as possible, the end result is always expensive and almost always does poorly.
Even Sony's most seasoned zealots held their tongues as Sony's hubris and come to bear the sad reality that their grip on the console industry may at least be disappearing. The $600 price-point cast a shadow over all the impressive technology demos they could possibly churn out. $600. Thankfully, it wasn't enough to ruin the tone of the whole convention but it was damn near close crushing the dreams of most of the people who had hoped to own a PS3 in the near future. Even the publicity (of the negative variety), ended up being weak as most media outlets focused on the successes of the other two and not on the PS3's price alone. Is it the end of the Sony hegemony? Only time will tell, but many people once viewed the PS3 as Sony's white-horse as the Corporation has hit pretty hard-times in the face of stiffer competition from cheaper rivals producing often superior products.
Highlights of E3: The Cream of the Crop
Spore: There's not much I can say about this game other than it looks amazing, and after Half Life 2 began to march towards emergent game play it is good to see a game riding entirely on emergent game play and not just as an element of the game.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl: Well, it looks amazing and will play on the classic controllers. The downloads for the trailer were over 150k downloads with Halo 3 distantly in second with 43,000 (at time of writing).
BioShock: I've been a fan of Irrational for awhile (New England pride!), but anything that's a spiritual successor to System Shock 2 with design this good is going force a purchase from me. A trailer would be nice.
Red Steel: What else can I say except that this is one of the best examples of the Wii control scheme being used in a traditional genre to be nothing short of amazing. Realistic swordplay brings tears to my eyes.
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The game looks amazing, but selling two version one for the Wii and one for the GameCube seems like a bad idea especially given the title is set to launch along-side the Wii. Why not have it be one version but let Wii users choose between controller styles?
WarHawk: One of the best-looking with regard to graphics and design of the PS3 games. It looks to take the best elements of StarFox and Crimson Skies and roll in a bit of FPS.
Supreme Commander: Okay, so it wasn't shown at E3 at all. But the spiritual successor of the great RTS of all time, Total Annihilation, deserves a place on this list. Sorry, Starcraft kiddies when I say RTS-I mean Strategy with a capital S.
Games of Interest: The Jury is Still Out
Too Human Trilogy: Maybe I've just come to expect a lot more from Silicon Knights, but the affects of the Microsoft buyout seem quite apparent in the rather dumbed-down trailers obviously meant for a mainstream audience. A pity since Too Human was a very ambitiously intellectual game, originally.
Battlefield 2142: I love the Battlefield series as it is some of the best multiplayer available, but something just feels funny about this one. It looks good but we'll have to see how it plays.
Crysis: Amazing physics, amazing graphics, great potential. But wait...is this a game or just a technology demo for CryEngine2?
Gears of War: I'm just not sure if there's anything here besides graphics.
Nintendo thankfully had a very strong and very positive presentation. While no price-point was named to counteract Sony's bombshell, the rumored $250 price remains unconfirmed. Such a price would be above what many consider to be the 'sweet spot' for a console that Nintendo is hoping to engage a new market of untapped casual gamers with, people who also will probably find spending $50 on a video game to be 'too much', which is where the Virtual Console comes in. Luckily, Nintendo seems to understand the untapped market for cheap, simple games and is taking the Virtual Console very seriously and not just as a side-feature. Still, Nintendo needs to be very careful to keep price-conscious consumers in mind because most of these people aren't going to make gaming a primary expense, like most hardcore gamers do.
Sony suffered the most at E3 and have the most to lose for it, so I'm going to spend most of the space talking about it. Sony. Wow, did they ever flub things up. At their presentations they continued espouse the value of graphics and its importance on games while talking about how BluRay is going to change the way we live and breathe. Sony presentations have always been mantras. Then they dropped the bomb. The $600 bomb shell.
Sony deciding to rub salt and vinegar in their wound announced their previously hyped "revolutionary" feature: a tilt sensor. Quickly people accused Sony of stealing Nintendo's ideas, but let's not forget the Wii controller has more then just tilt sensors, it senses movement, and where and how the controller is moving in a room. A mere tilt sensor is pretty pathetic, and hardly 'revolutionary', given all the other aspects of the Wii controller which arguably are revolutionary since the open up an incredible amount of game-play possibilities. Even more amusing was that the feature was thrown in at the last minute (A first-party studio was given the controllers a week before E3 and told to design their game around it), although Sony claims to have totally already had the idea since like, umm 1994. So either Sony has no idea what non-disclosure agreements are or they decided they needed to steal a little of Nintendo's thunder to be able to call the PS3 'revolutionary'.
It's pretty clear the PS3, while an incredible machine, is struggling with a serious lack of direction which is noticeable from its constantly fluctuating feature set and it's poor borrowing of features. It's trying to be a next-generation gaming machine - No wait, a BluRay DVD player - No, it's a media hub/router/media controller/PVR/HDeverythingintheworldmachine! The past has shown that when companies try to foist an unfocused strategy into one machine, trying to make the device do as many things as possible, the end result is always expensive and almost always does poorly.
Even Sony's most seasoned zealots held their tongues as Sony's hubris and come to bear the sad reality that their grip on the console industry may at least be disappearing. The $600 price-point cast a shadow over all the impressive technology demos they could possibly churn out. $600. Thankfully, it wasn't enough to ruin the tone of the whole convention but it was damn near close crushing the dreams of most of the people who had hoped to own a PS3 in the near future. Even the publicity (of the negative variety), ended up being weak as most media outlets focused on the successes of the other two and not on the PS3's price alone. Is it the end of the Sony hegemony? Only time will tell, but many people once viewed the PS3 as Sony's white-horse as the Corporation has hit pretty hard-times in the face of stiffer competition from cheaper rivals producing often superior products.
Highlights of E3: The Cream of the Crop
Spore: There's not much I can say about this game other than it looks amazing, and after Half Life 2 began to march towards emergent game play it is good to see a game riding entirely on emergent game play and not just as an element of the game.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl: Well, it looks amazing and will play on the classic controllers. The downloads for the trailer were over 150k downloads with Halo 3 distantly in second with 43,000 (at time of writing).
BioShock: I've been a fan of Irrational for awhile (New England pride!), but anything that's a spiritual successor to System Shock 2 with design this good is going force a purchase from me. A trailer would be nice.
Red Steel: What else can I say except that this is one of the best examples of the Wii control scheme being used in a traditional genre to be nothing short of amazing. Realistic swordplay brings tears to my eyes.
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The game looks amazing, but selling two version one for the Wii and one for the GameCube seems like a bad idea especially given the title is set to launch along-side the Wii. Why not have it be one version but let Wii users choose between controller styles?
WarHawk: One of the best-looking with regard to graphics and design of the PS3 games. It looks to take the best elements of StarFox and Crimson Skies and roll in a bit of FPS.
Supreme Commander: Okay, so it wasn't shown at E3 at all. But the spiritual successor of the great RTS of all time, Total Annihilation, deserves a place on this list. Sorry, Starcraft kiddies when I say RTS-I mean Strategy with a capital S.
Games of Interest: The Jury is Still Out
Too Human Trilogy: Maybe I've just come to expect a lot more from Silicon Knights, but the affects of the Microsoft buyout seem quite apparent in the rather dumbed-down trailers obviously meant for a mainstream audience. A pity since Too Human was a very ambitiously intellectual game, originally.
Battlefield 2142: I love the Battlefield series as it is some of the best multiplayer available, but something just feels funny about this one. It looks good but we'll have to see how it plays.
Crysis: Amazing physics, amazing graphics, great potential. But wait...is this a game or just a technology demo for CryEngine2?
Gears of War: I'm just not sure if there's anything here besides graphics.