Disclaimer: I have never been to E3. No posing with booth babes. No shaking hands with game designers and no fanboy catcalls at the press conferences. This is a straight on impression by a Pinoy gamer regarding who delivered the goods on the annual event, it is based on downloading/viewing footage, interviews and reading about E3 than actualy being there. Since most gamers would be in the same box as i am, i figured why not analyze how the hype would affect end consumers?
Sony: Whoa. Sony really had the worst press conference of the 3 big console makers. It was boring, too uptight, too many suits. Dont get me wrong, i think the PS3 is an amazing piece of hardware but they didnt exactly grabbed my attention with the way they handled their press conference. They did have some impressive looking games like FF13, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Assassin’s Creed but the price point of 599USD for the PS3 “premium” pack is just nuts. Bad news for consumers, especially those like me living in a third world country.
Nintendo: IMHO Nintendo stole the show from the nextgen competitors by doing two main things: 1) Showing off the controller and letting gamers feel that it WORKS. 2) They had fun demoing the Wii onstage which got people buzzing in excitement. Nintendo’s press conference didnt talk about terabytes of storage or gigaflops of processing power, but they did show you that playing Wii looks fun and exciting. Granted, it has been known that Wii will be less powerful than the PS3 or 360 but twisting your weakness into an advantage seems to be working for Nintendo at this point. It needed to drive home the point that you dont need an expensive system to enjoy playing games and it showed that on the show floor. Add to that the news that some 100+new planned releases for the DS until the end of the year just made things rosy for Nintendo this E3. Now, having a street price of roughly $200 will seal the deal for me.
Microsoft: Microsoft had a really good solid showing, the problem was that most of the content was expected except for Peter Moore showing off his 24inch pythons sporting a GTA 4 Logo. Personally, Im excited about Bioshock, Too Human and Gears of War and DOAX2. I hope that they continue to improve on XBL since it truly is one of the perks of being an xbox owner, and am hoping that MS releases Street fighter 2 on the marketplace soon. Except for Halo fanboys, the announcement of Halo 3 didnt elicit w00ts from me since MS would be stupid not to at least show off its biggest franchise at E3. Halo 3 looks good and shiny though but it was a only short clip with some minor plot teasers. Live Anywhere may turn out to be a good thing but i remain skeptical for the moment. Unlike the PS3 which promises the future, the Xbox 360 is right here, right now.
