The continued rise of music games is the next big theme of the conference as Nintendo joined the fray with Activision’s Guitar Hero World Tour and Harmonix’ Rock band.   Shane Bettenhausen on 1up Yours described the trend of how important it was to get one’s instrument peripherals into the homes of consumers as the plastic drum set cold war.  Although the music genre has long since been a vehicle for the casual market to get into gaming, the Guitar Hero franchise seems to be taking the series in a more hardcore direction by allowing the player to create new songs.  Newcomer Nintendo is seemingly trying to take up the mantle of “casual music game” by removing the instruments from the game and replacing it with Wiimote/nunchuk pantomiming while removing the game aspects of the genre by having it be subject to “Nintendo Fairness”, the phenomena where everyone has an equal chance of winning (see Mario Kart Wii’s power up system).  While Nintendo’s idea isn’t fully baked just yet, the potential for something truly great is possible with Wii Music, despite its laughable and embarassing presentation at E3.

The notion of accessibility and being easy to get into was also prominent at this year’s conference.  With Xbox Live’s new interface, It is very clear that Microsoft wants some of the casual market pie that Nintendo owns.  Nintendo’s continuing along with it’s Wii-game series with Wii-Resort and Wii Music, two very simple and straight forward games targeted at the masses.  Both Sony and Microsoft are doing the movie-through-the-console thing.  Everyone’s a gamer now to some degree and the Big 3 all want to capitalize on their presence.

The shifting of focus from the core to the casual gamer meant that a lot of the show just wasn’t meant for us, the rabid fanbase.  Chris Kohler of Wired Game|Life wrote up a satirical article on how the Nintendo Conference should have been.  Funny stuff, and I definitely think it would have worked out better if it happened the way Chris lays it out.  But I concede that we aren’t E3′s intended audience.

Whilst sorting through all of the doom and gloom news to come out of E3 2008, I was pleasantly surprised to find that a couple of my predictions were actually on target.  More retro remakes of games?  Check:  Galaga Legions!  Rez for PSN?  Not really, but the demo of Flower by thatgamecompany looks like an absolute dreamscape of an experience similar to the Rez experience.  Final Fantasy XIII mention?  Boom, bombshell, Xbox360 bound.  I guess the last two don’t really count, but I think it’s close enough to actually squeak out a win.  As for Earthbound for VC and Kid Icarus?  Salty tears indeed.

But even so, there were a couple of games that interested me from this year’s show.  Here’s my Top 5 games I look forward to playing because of E3:

• Little Big Planet – The most right game of this generation; the first user generated social networking game?  Admittedly, I didn’t pay that much to this game before.  But there was something about the inclusion of LBP in Sony’s press conference and seeing the castles built from playing in that sandbox that just flipped a switch in my head.  Plus, you might be able to sell your creations as a level builder.
• Fat Princess – This game is on my list because it looks hilarious.  A combination of Team Fortress 2, Zelda, and Rampart, this game looks like it would be an absolute riot to play with other folks.  If it only had voice chat…
• Flower – I’ve heard of this game only once before and paid no attention to it because I was not a fan of fl0w.  After seeing the video and hearing everyone praise the game, my old sentiments changed.  And there’s something innately soothing about flying through a field collecting petals.
• PixelJunk Eden – Another chill out game that tugs at all my artistic strings.  This and Flower both round out PSN’s ownership of the artsy, experimental game-o-sphere.  Can’t wait for it to come out at the end of the month.
• Megaman 9 – I need not say too much here.  I am, however, glad to hear that the demo at E3 was deviously hard.

Following this was a demo of Resistance 2 and then a discussion of Sony sales, powered by an extremely cute Little Big Planet demo.  If Little Big Planet can do this, then I’m in line day 1: this was neat and all financials should be done this way.

Then came a kind of strange focus on the still-alive PS2.  Tretton stated that this year there will be more than 130 PS2 games.  Moreover, the pricepoint of the core system is sticking to $129.  Really?  Are you serious?  C’mon now, I know you’re PS2 is still selling tons and tons but where’s the worlds-more-important PS3 stuff?

Playstation Network was the next focus, beginning with the announcement of the downloadable title Ratchet and Clank:The Quest for Booty.  It’s pretty incredible that full original games a la WiiWare will be coming to PSN: this game looks just like Future Tools of Destruction and will be available for like $15 online.   Not mentioned during the conference was FLOWER and Pixeljunk Eden (out July 31st apparently), but PSN is really starting to shape up.  The quote of the night from Jack was a jab at XBLA’s mass library of crap: “We’re not interested in filling up our stories with titles no one wants to play just so we can say we have the most.”  Oh snap.  Small mention of Home which read to me “It’s coming, just be patient!”  We’ve been patient for like a year!

At the end of the PSN talk came the introduction of a HD/SD video rental service.   Though it does not seem streamed to the machine like the XB360-Netflix partnership, this service allows you to purchase and download hi-def/standard-def movies onto the disk for a nominal fee, as well as transfer movies onto the Playstation Portable to go abroad.  The kicker?  It’s available TONIGHT.  This was an awesome announcement.

Speaking of the PSP, a string of new titles were formally announced that piqued my interest.  Super Stardust Portable was mentioned and boy am I excited…I still play Super Stardust HD.  I’ll also be Pon Pon Pata Pon-ing whenever Patapon 2 comes out (though I do need to finish this).

There was a quick God of War 3 trailer.  Rawr, Kratos is angry again!

All in all, I liked the conference with a single complaint: can we get some non-shooter PS3 disced software?  Let’s get some diversity into the lineup.  It’s a pretty long wait to Valkyria Chronicles and FFXIII.

A recurring theme throughout the conference was high level Nintendo executives demoing and “having a lot of fun” with the peripherals.  Which I suppose is cool though I do not feel that it was meant for us hardcore gamers.  Or perhaps Nintendo is now truly redefining ‘core gamer’ in terms of their success with the new demographic.  Anyway, The conference opened with the Shaun White snowboarding game using the Wii Balance Board.   Ok, I can see potential with that: I’m glad the bathroom scale is being used for other applications as skateboard and snowboarding really does make sense.   We even saw Cammie Dunaway, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, partake in some half-pipe snowboarding.  Admittedly, this is pretty cool, but it’s a no brainer: we knew applications like this were on the way.

Next came the confirmation of Animal Crossing for the Wii. Dubbed “City Folk”, it looks exactly like previous Animal Crossing games.   Hooray.  Boring.  What’s different this time?   Well for one, it’s very online oriented allowing Wii owners to visit other cities (presumably powered by Friend Codes), as well as talk in chat rooms with the Wii Speak microphone peripheral.  This microphone allows the Animal Crossing chat room denizens to communicate with each other.  Hey, voicechat…on a Wii game!  I’m glad Nintendo is taking steps to modernize itself with the online world, but yeah…I’m not really feeling this at all.  BUT IT HAS FOUR PLAYER COOPERATIVE FISHING.  Yeah..

Wii Motion Plus was next on the list, to be packaged with Wii Sports Resort which according to Ms. Dunaway is “Literally a day at the beach”.   A dog-catching-frisbee demo featuring the 1:1 motion sensing was shown on stage. This was followed by a sword duel (on a beach?) between Reggie and Cammie where supposedly they both hand each others asses to each other to the cheers of the audience.  Sounded like a great tech demo for the peripheral, but obviously very shallow since it’s meant to showcase the new hardware.  Another point I failed to pick up on intially was touched on the most recent episode of 1up Yours that by releasing such a peripheral, Nintendo is falling into the same trap that Microsoft stumbled into with the multiple SKUs of Xbox 360s: they would effectively be splitting up the market to those consumers that have the peripheral and those that don’t.   I remember the sad days of me lacking a N64 RAM addon pack where I couldn’t play Perfect Dark or Majora’s Mask on my home console. Except, this has the potential to be even worse since this directly affects game play and not just graphics.   Or maybe not considering the WMP is being packaged with Wii Sports Resort similar to the super-duper-mega-multiplatinum Wii Play (AKA, the controller packaged with a game).

At the heart of the conference Nintendo reintroduced Wii Music, which was a neat tech demo when the Wii was introduced at E3 two years ago.  Back then it seemed to be a simple orchestra conducting game.  That has evolved into something different, perhaps an attempt to cash in on the Rock Band/Guitar Hero music game genre.   The catch is that they aren’t requiring plastic instrument controllers like the aforementioned titles but instead you’re holding the Wiimote in different configurations and waggling/pressing buttons to emulate a sound.  So instead of looking retarded with plastic instruments, you can look retarded playing make believe violins with Wiimote and Nunchuk air gesturing instead!  This was demonstrated by folks at Nintendo (I forget who, I think their Treehouse localization team) playing a jam session rendition of a tune from F-Zero and Super Mario Brothers.  The folks at 1up Yours described it as “A horrible Caribbean band on crack.”  In tune, but horrible.  This seems like another piece of software for the casual crowd…this really almost sounds like a toddler’s game.  Killer app for the hardcore gamer, this is not.  Ugh.

There was a quick mention of the Mario and Zelda teams working on a new project.  That’s more along the lines of what I wanted to hear.  And Rockstar is working on Grand Theft Auto DS: China Town Wars.  Whoa…really?  Old GTA top-down style with text?  Interesting, but I’m still underwhelmed.

So Nintendo.  Where was that core gamer game you promised would be announced at E3 a couple weeks ago?  This conference was a snooze fest.  Three major games.  None of them for me.

From following up on the numerous liveblogs on the major gaming sites, the day started with a subtle and conspicuously timed announcement from Nintendo on their new motion controller, Wii Motion Plus.  Wii Motion Plus is a Wiimote attachment that greatly expands the motion detection on the input device.  Currently, the Wiimote is used primarily to detect shifts in direction.  For example, whether or not the wiimote shifts in one direction, tilts, or in other words moved along a two dimensional plane.  Wii Motion Plus presumably is an addon that adds the third dimension to the Wiimote, giving it (as the boards have stated) 1:1 movement in space.  The best example I can think of is golf swings.  The golf minigame in Wii Sports, although pretty average, was for the most part just a speed detector in how fast the accelerometer moves in one direction.  My best guess is that the Wii Motion Plus will be used for software like an enhanced Wii Sports to track swing followthrough or something else that is very dependent on location of accessories in space.

More important was Nintendo’s announcement of this controller a day before the Microsoft and Sony press conferences, both of which were rumored to announce some sort of motion controller.  While this is a very clear attempt to knock the wind out of the sails of those rumor boats, I find it extra conspicuous that Microsoft didn’t have a motion controller of any sort at this conference.  Hmm.

Microsoft’s press conference was filled with a whole lot of unexpected announcements.  It began with demos of Fallout 3 and Resident Evil 5, two multiplatform titles we knew about.  Much more interesting was Peter Molyneux announcing that Fable 2 is finished and is coming this October.  What’s this about the Fable 3 looking unfinished from the gaming press?  October is awfully close.  Gears of War 2 was announced for this November officially too buuuut we already knew it was coming out this fall.  From the liveblogs, it did not seem like Microsoft focused on Gears of War 2 as much as we all expected them to.

The new XBox Live interface was officially unveiled at the conference as well.  The Mii clone/avatar portion of that interface was leaked weeks ago.  And they most definitely look like Miis.  I suppose it’s a good idea to make XBLive more personable but ultimately Live already controls the online user experience with chatrooms/voicecomm/etc. and Miis aren’t that big of a deal.

What is a big deal is the announcement of Portal:Still Alive for XBLA, which are brand new Portal levels.   No mention of whether or not it includes the original game.  Didn’t Valve announce a few months ago that Microsoft declined Portal on XBLA because of size limitations?  No brainer here, Portal was only the most talked about game of 2007.  Especially good deal for Valve and the Portal kids: the game deserves it.

In probably the smartest announcement of the conference, Microsoft announced a partnership with Netflix to allow Netflix subscribers to watch movies and TV programming over live.  For no additional cost.  Although it was long rumored that something like this was coming along, this is a good idea: the XBox 360 is a perfect trojan horse for media of all kinds.

Closing up the conference was the introduction of Yoichi Wada, head of Square Enix.  First we got more of what we already knew that Square was working on for XBox: Star Ocean, Last Remnant, and Infinite Undiscovery (what does this name even mean?!).   But then the megaton came.

Final Fantasy XIII.  For XBox 360.

The NeoGAF forums are still exploding from this announcement.  FFXIII was at one point a PS3 exclusive.  Coming to XB360.  Megaton.

Or is it?

Let’s break this down a little bit.  XBox has little market presence in Japan and Europe outside of the UK.  The XB360 exclusive titles of Lost Odyssey and Ninja Gaiden 2 were two titles that were aimed at getting a bit more market share in Japan with little success (PS3 install base still outnumbers XB360 install base by about 3 to 1 as of May/June).  Final Fantasy XII is a much more japan-friendly title than either of those two titles.  Will it make the bump in Japan that they think it will?  Probably not, an asston of PS3s and MGS4s just sold and the install base gap is getting wider.

How about in the U.S., the XBox stronghold? First and foremost, FFXIII going multiplatform is a stab in the heart of those who bought PS3s just to play it.  Additionally, it is a strong statement to consumers who will be asking themselves why they would buy an expensive PS3 to play a game they could play on the cheaper XB360.   At the same time, will a traditionally Playstation branded RPG sell on the XBox?  A japanese RPG on a system dominated by shooters, bald space marines, and other live multiplayer experiences?  I’m very hesitant to say yes, but I think the attach rate of the FFXIII on PS3 will be stronger as was the case with Grand Theft Auto 4.

In any case, to quote Shane Bettenhausen on the 1up Liveblog, “Shit just got real.”  This is indeed a megaton.  I cannot wait to see how Sony and Nintendo are going to react.

Edit:  Apparently here’s how the Final Fantasy thing is going to work out.  Exclusive in Japan for PS3.  Then x number of months to localize it to North America and Europe on PS3, not to be released until they finish porting it to XBox.  So, working to XBox’s strengths.

Edit 2: Where the hell is Alan Wake?

• 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.