Official E3 2007 Discussion

Uh... ya. Ok this was pretty garbage. Nothing really new announced at all. A lot of old trailers that anybody that has been following the industry has already seen many times now. And the audience was just stoic.

Honestly, my favourite part of the whole thing has to be Sessler screaming/whispering in the background "KEEP SHOWING IT!" as they cut to commercial during the friggin Halo 3 trailer. I mean seriously! G4... you suck.

Nintedo announced that the Zapper controller is a reality. Nintendo said that the Zapper controler will combine the Wii-mote and nunchuck in a tommygun-esque gun form. Games such as Ghost Squad and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles will make use of the Zapper.

Sweet! This has been one of my most wanted Wii controlers since the Wii-mote showed its superiority in the FPS genre. Shooting games will have a much more realistic feel now that your actually holding the gun, instead of the point and click mentality of the Wii-motes mouse like pointer.

This is the final design of the Zapper controller,a slight departure from the original Zapper shown at least years E3. According to Nintendo, it will retail for $19.99.

It will retail for $19.99 including a game is my understanding. Which makes it not bad. Nintendo is being very smart about bundling accessories with software tying them closely together.

But really what Nintendo's conference highlighted to me is that I don't get it. That's what everybody was telling me last year with the infamous Wii article. But I guess I didn't appreciate just how far Nintendo was going to go with the whole non-gamer direction. WiiFit, I have to say, is absolute genius. It is going to be gobbled up by a TON of people, especially women. I mean, why spend X hundreds of dollars on a gym membership and personal trainer etc etc, when you have a super personalized routine accessible at all times.

It's my long standing belief that people will spend their money on things that improve their lives with convenience, and WiiFit does that in spades. There's almost no point in comparing Nintendo with the other manufacturers. I mean, do people compare the sales of Halo with Microsoft Office? It's almost getting into that realm. That's not to say it's bad what Nintendo is doing, but it's EXTREMELY divergent from the traditional gaming (obviously) and well, at what point is it still considered a game?

• Super Smash Bros Brawl will be releasing on December 3rd. No ONLINE it seems!
• EA is going online with Madden and FIFA. This is actually really good for the Wii. I'm actually quite happy about that.
• Mario Kart Wii to be released early next year, and online. Again, this is a good thing as I know Mario Kart DS has sold extremely well. And heck MK is always fun.
• Wii Accessories (Zapper and Steering wheel). These are pretty cool. I personally love Light Gun games so having a cheap little add-on that turns the Wiimote into a full light gun is pretty sweet. Ghost Squad is a fun game, and I'm sure that the included software with the Zapper will be Duck Hunt-esq. The steering wheel is pretty lame though. I mean you can already buy one.
• Mario Galaxy will be released on November 12th
• WiiFit!! When this inevitably gets on Opera, 30 million housewives will rush to stores this holiday and pickup the Wii. It's a big deal.

I don't care if Nintendo delays Super Smash Bros. for a year or more (I'm lying), I want online in that game. But I'll buy it if it dosen't anyway. I'll play Battalion Wars online a lot to compensate. But what will Battalion Wars online be without voice chat? I really dought Nintendo is going to do a headset type of deal anytime soon, so how will you coordinate attacks with your squadmates? Ghost Squad looks cool, I loved the arcade game. But I wonder if they can really make a deep gaming experience from that arcade game. As for WiiFit, I might check it out. And where's my Pikmin!

• Echochrome on Playstation Network and PSP. Sweet named combined with an awesome concept of manipulating perspective to pass through mazes. Like a bunch of interactive MC Escher paintings.
• Wip3Out, Pain, WarHawk and SOCOM will be available on Playstation Network. WarHawk and SOCOM will be available on Blu-Ray as well, all for this year
• Home will have a social networking site attached to it where you can take pictures in Home and upload them to the site
• Deep integration between Home and games was also announced. Launch a game directly from Home, and quit game right back to Home. Unsure as to whether or not the Home can act as an in-game lobby or not.
• NCSoft will be developing some exclusive titles for PS3. The wording is kind of weird, Tretton made it sound like NCSoft would be developing exclusively for PS3, but Huxley and a Marvel MMO are being made for the 360 by NCSoft so...
• Haze and Unreal Tournament 3 are both time exclusive for this year. UT3 will support mods for the PC version.
• Infamous is a new title developed by Sucker Punch (studio behind the Sly Cooper games). Looks like a darker take on Crackdown.
• new MGS4 trailer, reiterated again that its exclusive for PS3. Releases in 2008, and will be the last MGS game by Kojima. Really. Last time he said that about MGS2 it was fake. And about MGS3 he was lying too. This one is really the last one.
• KillZone 2 trailer demonstrated and looks incredible.

Alright... thoughts about Sony's press conference. Well they definitely didn't screw up as much as last years. It's funny though. They showed about as many games as Microsoft, yet for some reason I found Sony's conference more enjoyable. I think the format has big effect on the impact of an individual game announcement. I mean, I already know about Assassin's Creed, Heavenly Sword, Little Big Planet etc, and yet when they showed video of them it was still interesting. As opposed to Microsoft where it was 10 minutes of somebody playing. Two different styles for sure, but Sony's was more entertaining.

Well the entertainment of a Press Conference doesn't determine marketshare, if that were true then OSX would have 90% of desktop sales, and Windows 5%, and not the other way around. What is notable is that a lot of the games shown by Sony, especially the more impressive ones are being released next year in 2008. While Microsoft's are all releasing this year. This is actually pretty similar to Microsoft's 2006 E3. I'm sure that 2008 E3 will feature quite a few of the same demos by the Sony studios simply because games like GT5, KillZone 2 and Infamous will still need promotion for next year.

Metal Gear Solid 4 was cool, but I'm getting tired of these darn cutscenes. They look cool, but tell me nothing about how the game plays. Or maybe they tell me everything about how the game plays ho! KillZone 2 for me is probably the most impressive thing that has been demonstrated thus far. I'll have to wait until I see a better quality high resolution trailer, but at face value it was pretty friggin sweet.