Forget Twitter, Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Project Natal, this is huge. Xbox Live is getting full, downloadable games this Fall. The games can be purchased with just a credit card meaning you don’t have to mess around with Xbox points. Nice. More as we get it.
Time sure does fly. It’s been a whole year since Devin and I popped our E3 cherries and we find ourselves back in LA for what is expected to be a return to glory for the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Not much going on today except for a few parties, but I did pass the convention center on my way to the hotel and noticed that Ubisoft and Sony dropped crazy money on signage.
E3 starts next week, and while I’ll be celebrating by, I don’t know, listening to Ron and Fez all day long, Peter, Devin, and Greg will be rubbing shoulders with celebrities like Adam Sessler and the girl who used to host “Cheat.” One thing the guys might run into in between chatting up G4 production assistants: SplitFish’s new controllers, the Dual SFX Evolution and Dual SFX Frag Pro. Both are for the PS3.
So what do we make of this? Check out Konami’s updated “mystery” Web site, and you’ll see a few letters and familiar faces flash across the screen. P, S, P, E, R, E. Write it down, because you will be tested on it later.
Will Metal Gear Solid be the big news story to come out of E3 this year? Konami is certainly doing its best to feed the hype monster, unnecessary beast that it is, what with this countdown timer it just published. And, of course, as soon as someone publishes a countdown timer, someone else has to deconstruct the flash file(s), ruining the surprise. Long story short: there’s five (5!) countdown clocks, and the first one expires on June 1, the same date as Microsoft’s E3 press conference. So let’s speculate!
Is a fancy new controller enough to “save” the PS3? We’ll find out at E3 (which is in June; several of us will be there), when Sony is now rumored to debut its motion-sensing controller.
Expect more of these ^
Come June, we will face a different E3 than recent years, and if you believe the planners, different than even the old days. The confusing, “invite only” nature of the show recently has taken such withering criticism from industry heavies that the planners have moved back to the old format, and the most outspoken critics are now effusive in their praise.
Attempts by the planners to adapt E3 — such as the separate “E for All” event — have been rendered moot, and were probably non-starters anyway. It seems that E3 has a role to play, and that roll is a colossal cluster…well, you know. It’s got to be huge, it’s got to be expensive, and once again companies will have to structure their development schedules around it. Why do I get the feeling the swag won’t be as ridiculous next year?
It was rumored for a few days but now it’s official: the E3 we all know and love is coming back next year.
While the Entertainment Software Association says pretty much anyone will be allowed to attend, E3 2009 won’t suffer from the excess that plagued previous expos. Journalists will still be able to meet publishers behind closed doors without having to stand next to strippers, for example.
Speaking of strippers, here’s the status of booth babes, as told to Edge:
Here’s the thing. Our publishers will have the maximum ability to drive energy and excitement around their titles and their products. I would expect that you’re going to see models there, but there will be controlled guildelines, just like we’ve had previous years.
Sure, “controlled guidelines.” What does that mean, no full-frontal?
Anyone, to recap: E3 will be fun again. Lots of folks tangentially involved in the industry running around the Convention Center; publishers spending an incredible amount of money for a blurb in a magazine or 100-word post on a blog; young models showing off their bodies in the hope of being “noticed.”
Real America, in other words.
Umm…
Nintendo’s E3 performance didn’t please the hardcore types, the guys and girls who were by the company’s side since the days of the NES. Now Nintendo has admitted that it should have done an overall better job at the show, that it should have done a better job at catering to its fans.
Says the head of marketing, Cammie Dunaway:
I would say the message is we were disappointed with our performance at E3. There were titles like Wario which we think will be really fun titles that we should have show cased. We were excited that Mr. Miyamoto made the commitment that Pikmin is coming. It would have been nice if we could have said that on stage. But, we think it was a good recognition for us that we care for our core fans, and not just the new people who are now discovering Nintendo.
There’s a lot going on in that quote, but most striking (to me, at least) is the fun notion of paying attention to the company’s actual fans. The person buying Mario Does the Dishes from Wal-Mart isn’t watching E3 on G4, nor reading Web sites for up-to-the-minute information. E3 could just as well have been used to announce or show off games that appeal to these real life gamers. In other words, do casual gamers even know that E3 exists?
This is largely “who cares?” material, but it’s nice to see Nintendo recognize that, yes, it still has fans, and these fans weren’t exactly happy with what went down at E3.
via Edge Online
Quick, someone get Columbo on the phone, we’ve got ourselves a veritable mystery that needs solvin’.
Well, that may be a bit of a stretch, but some folks are wildly speculating over the fact that Microsoft withheld a Bungie trailer that was supposed to end its press conference last week at E3. Now, the only way that could happen, the only sway Microsoft has over Bungie, is if there’s a Halo game involved.
The trailer was pulled, with Microsoft saying it’ll instead debut at its own dedicated event.
Perhaps Microsoft felt the incredible amount of excitement generated by E3 would have overshadowed Halo.
Should they make a comeback?
How big of a waste of time was E3 this year? Watching the coverage on G4, you’d think something important was happening. Maybe FPS With Different Shades of Brown 87 still interests y’all, but I’d say the show was rather bland.
Even Electronic Arts, everyone’s favorite giant of a publisher, agrees that the show has lost its luster, saying that the show’s new format, shall we say, stinks on ice:
I hate E3 like this. Either we need to go back to the old E3, or we’ll have to have our own private events.
Thus spoke EA CEO John Riccitiello. Only 5,000 people showed up to the event this ear, whereas in years past it drew somewhere around the 60,000 mark. So, EA is saying, essentially, bring on “da noize,” or we’ll just rent out some hotel’s event space for our own purposes. That’s all well and good for the big publishers, but what about the little guy?
Even Ubisoft harshed on the show this year.
Remember this?
We should know for sure by E3, but for now it looks like Microsoft will release a 60GB Xbox 360 sometime this month. An internal e-mail, which I refuse to copy-paste here out of respect for the original source, Xbox Family, supposedly sent from Microsoft to GameStop and Best Buy details the company’s plans.
In addition, Microsoft will release a stand-alone 60GB hard drive for Core and Arcade owners, and people with a 1st gen Pro, like me. Speaking of which, this new 60GB SKU is supposed to replace the current Pro model. The hard drive comes with three months of Xbox Live, a wired headset and an ethernet cable. Fancy.
But yeah, E3 starts next week, and Peter and Devin will be having a blast running around from meeting to meeting, playing mud-colored FPS after mud-colored FPS.
via 1UP
Mythological developer 3D Realms wants you all to know that work on Duke Nukem Forever continues at an acceptable pace. So acceptable, in fact, that its CEO Scott Miller used the phrase “seriously nicely” to describe progress.
But it gets even better! The same Miller, when asked whether or not 3D Realms would be using this year’s “E3” to show off the game, laughed a mighty laugh.
It’s just that we view E3 as irrelevant nowadays. In fact, I wasn’t even aware it was coming up.
Words that infuriate Peter and Devin, no doubt, who will be pretending to work from the show floor if a few weeks’ time. Maybe the airline will loose Peter’s bags again, and we can tease him some more.
That Xbox 360 price drop rumor is gaining traction. This is the full-page Kmart ad; isn’t it grand?
More importantly, the flyer where the ad is from is for the week of July 13, which coincides with E3 week. Don’t put it past Microsoft to use the pared down trade show to announce price cuts.
Nintendo put the kibosh on the rumor of a new DS at E3 after Enterbrain’s president supposedly told Bloomberg that there would be one. Now Enterbrain has issued a statement saying that Hirokazu Hamamura never said any such thing.
“No such statement or announcement was made by the president,” the company said.
“He did not, however, make a comment about the possibility of an announcement by Nintendo concerning a new model or successor to the Nintendo DS due to its current scarce product availability caused by its worldwide popularity,” the company added.
A few days ago I reported that Enterbrain’s publisher Hamamura was predicting that Nintendo would reveal a new DS at E3. Nintendo Japan is now clearing up the situation altogether instead of giving the typical “we don’t comment on rumors blah blah blah.”
Nintendo Japan’s head of PR said, “We cannot comment on the specifics of what will be announced at E3, but at the very least there won’t be anything like what Mr. Hamamura suggested, so would like to clearly deny this. We’re having a hard time understanding what kind of evidence [Mr. Hamamura] had for saying this.”
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