This year’s E3 has been sort of a mixed bag. Although we were treated with the mega bombshell slap-Sony-in-the-face announcement of Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox360, the rest of the expo teetered on boring. Microsoft had little to say about their future (which was partially their own fault by pulling the plug on the announcement of Bungie’s secret next project), Nintendo gave their die-hard faithfuls a box of tissues, and Sony had little to say that was actually new. The conference became more of an event for the mainstream and less of an event for the enthusiast; fewer marquee games, more of an emphasis on the sales and revenue. E3 is no longer the spectacle it once was. Despite this, there were still a few good things to emerge from the ashes of the old conference and there are some clear industry trends that stuck out more to me this year than others.
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The Sony E3 Conference, for lack of better words, was pretty good. There was no shocking “OH SNAP” moment nor was there any counterpunch to Microsoft’s own shocker. At the same time, their conference seemed to be very balanced (albeit shooter heavy) in regards to the features they would be providing in the future with a strong focus on PSN and PSP.
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The Nintendo E3 conference was not as shocking and unexpected as the Microsoft conference the day before. After all, the killer app (the Wiimote extension Wii Motion Plus) was revealed a day earlier. Quite frankly, they don’t need to wow anyone. Nintendo already dominates the mindshare of the mainstream consumer, and their conference really exploited that fact: the core gamer games were almost non-existent. The fact that the Nintendo conference was not targeted toward their loyal and rabid fanbase is pretty much a slap in the face and not a good sign of what’s to come. NOA President Reggie Fils-Aime’s response on G4? “How could you feel left out? The Animal Crossing that we’ve been hearing about that people wanted. Fully connected to the Internet, go to other people’s towns. Plus as I said, Grand Theft Auto on the DS. How do you feel left out with those types of announcements?” Yeah, ok. Anyhoo, casual games incoming!
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E3 2008 has already been filled with megaton announcements…and we’re not even through the first day! Highlights of the day include a new Wiimote motion controller addon presumably featuring 1:1 motion detection, release dates for the second chapters of Fable and Gears of War, the update to XBox Live, and Final Fantasy XIII for the 360. Yes. The Xbox. Dogs and cats living together total hysteria!
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My very short list of what I want to see from E3 2008. All of which are incredibly unrealistic!
- Earthbound finally brought to the Virtual Console. C’mon Nintendo! It was reviewed officially by the ESRB back in May, over 2 months ago. Stop making the starmen.net community cry. Educate nu-Nintendophiles about who Ness is and why he has appeared on three incarnations of Super Smash Brothers. Pull the trigger already, we’re all waiting for this gem.
- Kid Icarus on the Wii. So what if the NES game wasn’t that good? It’s been 20 years. Announce the sequel already. The masses have spoken…and whined and cried. Hey Nintendo, do you really want to taste the salty tears of all those die hard Nintendophiles?
- More retro remakes of games. Words cannot describe how excited I am to see Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Mega Man 9, and Chrono Trigger DS announced. Let’s see more of this stuff and keep the classics current, a la Stephen Totilo’s vision on an old episode of 1up Yours.
- Rez for PSN to go along with the upcoming Pixeljunk Eden. Playstation Network has been home to all sorts of hyper-artsy games like Everyday Shooter and Echochrome. Rez (or a Rez sequel) being a part of that library would further cement the indie scene on PSN and additionally would mean I would finally get a chance to play it.
- Anything regarding Final Fantasy XIII on the show floor. I’ll take another 15 seconds of FMV at this point. Just say something, dammit!
I don’t expect any of this stuff to be announced next week, but hey! We’re allowed to dream, right?
P.S. I’m glad I held back on getting a new 3g iPhone so I could avoid the lines and they could work out the kinks. It’s a no brainer they were going to hit load issues on day 1: the phone has gotten more buzz than anything else tech related in the world within the past month. Not surprised in the slightest that iTunes servers exploded, regardless of whether or not the problems were load related. Conversely, I did not expect the new software turning old-gen iPhones into iBricks in relation to this.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to get a 3g iPhone. But c’mon Apple, let’s do a little more testing before milking that cash cow a little more.
