The winners and losers of E3 2008, part one – the press conferences

I’ve just been watching the 1Up Show’s E3 special and Jesus wept that Nintendo conference was embarrassing for all involved. I could barely watch.

Generally I was disappointed with all of the conferences. Nintendo was just plain awful, but I don’t think Microsoft or Sony really fared much better either.

Without the FFXIII thing, Microsoft’s conference would’ve been fairly tame. They showed a couple of games I’m very interested in and they looked pretty damn good, but where were the new game announcements? What’s coming up after Christmas? We’ve no idea. Too much time concentrating on casual stuff that just looked bad and the dashboard remix is just crap.

Sony showed more new games, but they were pretty much entirely unappealing. God of War was nothing more than a CGI snippet when it could’ve been a conference-stealer. Infamous looks nice and fun, but it’s Crackdown meets Psi-Ops and too far in the future to care about now. M.A.G. has the stupidest name ever and is about as appealing as… SOCOM. The high-point for me was Flower, and I’ve no idea if that’s even a game or not.

These guys really need to learn that we’re not interested in sales figures and all that shit. Put that out in a press release after the show if you must. But these things need to be short and snappy and BANG BANG BANG new game, first footage, big reveal wow moments.

From a “covering the events live” point of view, Microsoft fucking killed it. Huge rush, manic, loads of new stuff, me and Pat yelling at each other over MSN: exactly how it should be.

During Sony and Ninty’s conferences were just having regular conversation most of the time. Of course there were hairy moments, but nothing like the MS conference.

Again: purely from a coverage point of view.

I don’t think Nintendo lost nor came third. They’ve actually produced very little, with very little effort, insulted people by basically admitting the Wiimote couldn’t handle movement detection enough so they’ve factored in something to improve it that’ll cost you.

From a business point of view, Nintendo won buckets. From a gamer’s perspective though, all three underperformed.

I think its indicative of Nintendo’s E3 performance that the ‘OMG’ moment for the Wii fans seems to be Miyamoto saying “we’re doing Pikmin” at a round-table discussion.

I’m a bit confused about what happened to a bundle of the games we were expecting to see, tbh. Where was Heavy Rain? Wipeout HD? Alan Wake (ha ha)? Wasn’t there supposed to be Forza 3? Why did they pull Bungie’s unveil? etc. etc.

There seem to be a gazillion games we either already know about or think we already know about that they’ve purposely held back for some unknown reason. Even if they weren’t going to show them, surely they could’ve mentioned them? Unless they really are holding everything back for Leipzig.

Leipzig for Bungie apparently. Will there be an X08 this year or something similar, I wonder.

I can’t see there being an X08. We’ve got Leipzig in August, Games Convention Asia in September, TGS in October. That’s three shows (okay, maybe GCA won’t be so big but still) in three months and then we’re into the Christmas silly season.

I guess they could do one in mid-November to showcase brand new ‘buy a 360 this Christmas and this is what you’ll be getting next Christmas’ games.

Thank god someone called the Sony presser for what it is. The only thing to get remotely excited about this year is Little Big Planet (R2 looks great, but just not my bag) and even then it’s lucky I have a PS3 already because brilliant as it is, £300 is a lot to shell out for it still.

Microsoft should be docked a point for Bungie mind, though it’d be cool if it did turn out to be Leipzig because we’ve half a chance of getting there

LBP’s slippage pissed me off but I’d rather it slipped a little and just got done properly than being a half-arsed release.

MAG looked a bit shitty, put me in mind of that team soho war game on the PS2 that was equally nasty.

I think Sony’s conference was the best in terms of presentation. Very professionally done and very stylish looking.

I’d agree with that. I thought the MS conference was pretty awful until the Square Enix bit.

@Psycho: Aside from their Valkyria Chronicles balls-up, that is.

/facepalm

I’m buying it for the PSP and they can’t stop me!!

That was just stupidly embarrassing for them. It’s one of the few third-party exclusives they’ve still got and they don’t even know which fucking machine it’s coming out on.

Spiral: The start and end of the MS conference was good… but the middle bit was a shambles, ruined the whole thing.

All of Microsofts announcements were really ‘me too’, with the big announcement being very defensive. But its a step in the right direction for them to get Square on side. All I would say is that I tihnk it will stop more people buying PS3s than buying 360s.

Sonys was a dull presentation which went on waaaaay too long and mostly glossed over the ps3 in favour of past glory. They are definitely repositioning peoples expectations fo the PS3 away from the size of success of the PS2 to a much more ‘so so’ performance. I personally tohught it was the better conference in terms of going forward though.

Nintendo quite rightly couldn’t give a damn what anyone in that crowd thought about them, and they just wanted go back to Japan and swim in their pool of money.

Roll on Leipzig.

I think Sony’s was the best presentation, using LBP the way it did made sales figures entertaining, which has to be a first.

As for MS it was mostly crap with a big surprise at the end, any presentation that has the shite that is “You’re In The Movies” get so much time is a failure in my book plus Duffy trying to sing with herself was terrible.

Didn’t see the Nintendo one but lack of professionalism in MS conference was surprising. Regardless of content they normally put on a very good presentation. Sony in recent years have been poor in that respect but turned it around this year.

In terms of overall content it’s MS, Sony, Nintendo for me. Although ignoring the lack of anything new the Sony stuff interests me more.

Got to ask again – PJMaybe – what are you on about with LBP delay? It’s been October for months … http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=137090

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/240968.html

Microsoft won by a long, long way.

I have no intention to play FF, as I loathe turn based combat and JRPGs in general, but they still won.

Because I said so.

What was unprofessional about the MS conference?

I did think the Sony conference was very professional. Just… dull.

To go back to something that Pat said in his Microsoft bit, it was interesting to see both Fallout and Resi 5 at the Microsoft conference. And from the videos I’ve been downloading, it appears that pretty much everyone who’s doing multi-format stuff was showing on the 360. I think Sony should be just as concerned about that as they should be about SquareEnix’s shift in allegiances. Their promised ‘games will lead on PS3 and port to 360 in the future’ thing just doesn’t seem to be happening at all.

“But watching a team of Nintendo executives playing the self-professed “toy” on stage, culminating in a group leap into the air, was cringeworthy beyond compare.”

It might have looked stupid, but it still made me laugh.

And I think that’s the point most people missed with the Nintendo conference. I don’t give a rat about what the jaded, boring, unimaginative “core” audience say. It was a bit of silly fun.

The “core” gamer might not want to have a bit of silly fun, but there’s millions and millions of people in the world (including my own family) who never picked up a controller until the Wii and the DS came up. Now they’re playing together.

Reggie was talking crap when he said there was enough for the “core” gamer though, I won’t deny that. But frankly, if I want those kinda games, I’ll go turn on my 360.

For some reason I keep mentally blocking out the Live Arcade stuff. I do not know why, it was fairly decent. I’m really interested in Sony’s buy content online idea, that impressed me far more than Microsofts stuff. If it’s got decent (read no) DRM and isn’t totally gimped for PAL regions I could see myself getting a lot of use from it for TV shows.

@Patlike
Just seemed a bit of a shambles. The You’re in the Movies bit, people seemed unprepared and embarrassed, pregnant pauses for applause which never came, that sort of thing.

From my point of view alot of Nicrosofts best news was over-shadowed by 1. FF 13 and 2. The avatar/Singstar/Mii bollocks.

Left a sour taste in my mouth.

Nintendos was fucking dire and Sony was just dull.

E3 was shit all round.

DD – Yeah, fair enough. That was definitely the low-point of the entire thing, I reckon. Lips was good, I thought, for the same reasons SingStar’s good, but You’re in the Movies just looked odd. Not sure how it fits.

I think Sony’s was the best, they had more to show and actually revealed some stuff, the FF13 thing may have been a shocker, but really… MS’s biggest anouncment was a multi-plat, i mean seriously….

morris: That vid was pretty good.

@Blerk: I watched the Ubi conference and lo and behold Shaun White and PoP4 were also both playing on 360s.

Strangely though Mirror’s Edge was being displayed on PS3s. I even had a few people ask me if it was PS3 exclusive.

Dunno why FFXIII would leave a sour taste abzero.

@Gekidami
I think MS had far more genuinely new stuff but Sony’s conference suffered from previous mistakes and having to announce stuff way before they should have done previously.

What you would expect at this point is stuff that’s about to be released – new ingame footage – Resistance 2, Motorstorm 2, LBP – check. For stuff a bit further away – ingame footage – KZ2, Infamous – check. For the furthest off stuff – initial footage, cgi if needed MAG, GoW3 – check.

There was a lot more in terms of games from Sony too, see list above, which was good.

Why the hell didn’t Sony show Motorstorm 2?

It must have been in the montage stuff I guess they wanted to save some things for Leipzig?

@DrDamn
What new stuff? It was all ripped from everyone else? Or it was third party.

Blerk – Top of the “loser” list in tomorrow’s feature. Baffling.

Dashboard update was a big one. A lot of features borrowed but done in a very nice and slick way.

Primetime stuff with Endomol – which personally I think will be shit, but likely very popular.

FFXIII was the only significant “Announce” of any of them. Although it’s no where near the megaton some on here think.

It is, man! It is!

The prime time stuff was new thats right. I just thought they played catchup with the rest. Lips is Singstar, Scene it is Buzz, Avatars are Miis, the dashboard just brings it upto the standard of the XMB, Resi 5 is multi-platform, Fallout 3 was multi-platform, GOW looked very incremental. And then they re now also getting FF.

I didn’t see anything to make me go out and buy a 360, only things to stop me from selling one.

Oh and Portal 2 coming to XBLA ffs – that’s v.good.

Blerk, look how the “megaton” got reported in the mainstream press … http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7506927.stm … that’s why it isn’t.

I suppose I own a PC and am expecting that to be on that. So lets give them:

The primetime channel,
and portal 2.

Wow! I’m going to go out and buy a 360 right now!

Portal: Still Alive isn’t Portal 2.

DD – Shit. I actually forgot about that. That’s pretty major stuff, yeah.

Well the portal game that they’re doing for XBLA then.

@DrDamn: The mainstream press can barely figure out what Grand Theft Auto is, never mind Final Fantasy. It’s surprising that they noticed at all!

You don’t just base your buying decision on what they show which is all brand new though do you? You base it on what they show altogether. In this respect both MS & Sony had a really nice line up of solid games.

MS : Gears 2, Fallout 3, Res Evil 5, Fable 2, Lots of nice looking JRPGs with upcoming release dates in Europe at the same time as the US/Japan.
Sony : Resistance 2, Motorstorm 2, LBP, KZ2, Infamous, MAG, GoW3

All of these games we got new and interesting info on. Why just look at the stuff which is brand new?

Actually Fallout 3 I thought was a low point for the MS presentation just because it was a really poor demo. Seen vids since which have restored my faith in the game.

Yeah FO3 has been something I’ve wanted since finishing FO:T 7 years ago so I was left a bit deflated from the MS demo but other play throughs that have been shown have had more time to show it off. I hold out a lot of hope for it but it’ll be bought on the PC for me. I’m still trying to forget the only previous console Fallout. Urgh.

No sorry, morriss I never meant that FF 13 left a sour taste, more that Resi 5, Gears 2 etc got kinda ignored in the after-math and just side-lined to display Movie Eyetoy thing.

I like to see some innovation, something fun, something I’ve never seen before, something to get me excited. I didn’t get that from the Microsoft show. To be honest, I don’t really get that from Microsoft full stop. I find there stuff to be really dull, with Rare being the only people trying to do something slightly different and inventive. I think its about time that Microsoft stood on there own two feet and came out with there ideas instead of just stealing everyone elses.

abzero: oh right, I getchya.