E3 2007
Last year, E3 was an explosive trade event; a parade of the videogame industry’s biggest guns, with PR departments carpet-bombing the press with megaton announcements. Eagerly anticipated by salivating gamers, and digested by hundreds of thousands of media-hungry feed-syndicated online-enabled video-blogging technogeeks around the world, every phrase dropped by a representative was dissected, analysed, and in several cases, memeified.
This year, E3 crept up on us and just happened, much like how the clocks go back in Autumn and you’re left wondering for the next three days why you’ve suddenly become the first one to arrive at the office in the morning. In a move to cut down on the number of bloggers attending, posing as online “journalists”, the event organisers have turned things down a notch or two, and are now operating on an invitation-only basis. If this new E3 Lite says anything about the future of gaming press releases, it’s that those looking for insights into the future of gaming should look elsewhere.
It’s a return to what the show was originally about: trade. The conferences held by the Big Three were aimed at shareholders, retailers, and potential investors. Not customers, and certainly not gamers. There were graphs, charts, montages, case studies, success stories, statistics, figures, broken records (both in the sense that previous bests had been surpassed, and that the same messages were being repeated over and over again), and perhaps worst of all, no potential memes.
Here’s my summary of the three presentations:
Microsoft
Apart from a bunch of release dates for 360 titles, Microsoft had little new information to divulge this year. There will be a special edition of the 360 console produced to coincide with the release of Halo 3. Eurpoeans were told to expect the Elite 360 (larger hard drive, HDMI output) in August. Gears of War is coming to the PC, as is Viva Pinata.
More interesting than anything they had to say at E3 was the news snippet release just prior that said 360s will soon be manufactured using a new chipset, designed to be more efficient, which should help a lot to reduce the number of red ring deaths.
Nintendo
The combined forces of Reggie, Iwata, and Miyamoto couldn’t save this show. It was always going to be hard for Nintendo to meet expectations following their past few appearances. Having finally rolled the Wii out, and watching it help make them one of the top 10 most valuable Japanese companies, I never expected them to have much else up their sleeves so soon. They didn’t. I would even go so far as to say it was the worst conference of the three, even beating Sony.
There were the Zapper and Wheel peripherals, which were little more than lumps of moulded plastic designed to hold the Wiimote. Cringes all round as the pauses for applause went unfulfilled. Mario Kart was shown to appease the bored hardcore, but Wii Fit was the most interesting new game on offer. Using some kind of wireless aerobics mat, it looks set to be as popular as Wii Sports, which is to say, very.
Sony
Oh Sony. Sony, Sony, Sony. Every time one of your PR executives opens their mouth it’s another nail in your coffin. But not this time. No, today you played it as safe as the others, and were less sealing your tomb than simply redecorating the inside. The price cut for the US PS3 was confirmed; $100 off the RRP of the 60GB model. An 80GB model is to appear soon.
They’ve gone and done a Nintendo and remade the PSP. It’s now percentage lighter, and other_percentage faster, or something. No name yet. PSPSP? It would certainly match their palidromic SixaxiS controller. Nothing notable on the games front.