Microsoft – Only showing games to be released this year was an interesting gimmick, but ultimately I felt that it was a mistake. It did a great job of showing off the 2007 release list for the 360 which is, in my opinion, by far the best of the three consoles, only to leave 2008 and beyond as something of a vacuum that left the door open for the other two to take the plaudits. The likes of MGS4 aren’t coming out this year but they still carry a lot of weight as franchises.
And why did Microsoft choose to show only their 2007 titles and then show Resi 5 anyway? Why not just show other future titles and plug the strength of the 2007 lineup? They could easily have had their cake and eaten it.
The show itself fairly poor until it was saved by some excellent gameplay footage of big games like Call of Duty 4 (plus online beta!) and Assassin’s Creed. I’m still as hot for Halo 3 as I ever was after that trailer, as well, although it was admittedly not a brilliant trailer. It’s just that they played it safe, had their aforementioned high points, a couple of low points (the Madden thing was…ugh), and came out just affirming what we already knew: that the Xbox 360 has a strong 2007 lineup. They need a huge X07 or TGS now.
Overall: C+
Nintendo – I don’t doubt that every mainstream outlet on the planet is writing glowing features on Wii Fit as we speak and it’s going to make ridiculous amounts of money, but that show was a lesson in how to alienate your hardcore fans. I’m admittedly a lapsed Nintendo fan and a Mario game doesn’t do it for me like it used to (I’ll still buy Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 for sure, though), but nothing there did it for me. What was there except Wii Fitness and half a dozen new Wii peripherals? Vision Training? Not even any big DS announcements!
Mario Kart? It looks the same as Double Dash and they already did it online on the DS. No Animal Crossing. Little new on Smash Bros except a release date met with dead silence. The focus on Wii Fit meant that it ended up coming off like an infomercial for a step machine like you get on Five US when CSI isn’t on, and just affirmed for me that Nintendo and the Wii is no longer going with what I, as a gamer, want.
Overall: D
Sony – Mainly given the advantage of following Nintendo’s show and having only to be better than last year, Sony only really had to show some games that weren’t coming out this year in order to ‘win’, and they did. It started badly with some cringe-worthy Home skits and a painful appearance by Chewbacca, as well as so many plugs that it felt like I was watching Casino Royale again (“Spider-Man 2, now available on Blu-ray Disc, DVD, and UMD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment”; “connect your PSP to your Sony Bravia flatscreen TV”; “Home on my Sony-Ericsson mobile phone”), but then it was uphill.
The new PSP is a good improvement even if it didn’t have internal memory (I’ll buy one when it gets hacked), Echochrome looks cool, and MGS4, Uncharted, and Killzone all look superb. For the first time since E3 2005 I’m seriously considering when I plan to buy a PS3 and which game is going to do it.
Overall: B+
Overall, though, I think we can all agree that the new E3 is a disappointment for those of us who like to sit back and enjoy the show. Bring back the old one, I say!
Even if the big show isn’t the same as it used to be (I miss it already), that doesn’t mean that the big companies aren’t up to their old tricks. This is what my money’s on the big three announcing at their conferences – which start with Microsoft’s a fortnight today – along with a few outside bets.
Microsoft
- $100/£80 price drop across all SKUs.
- Halo 3 campaign demo, hopefully closer to the real thing than last time.
- Ninja Gaiden 2. I then spend an hour trying to clean up the mess I made.
- Some real PGR4 and Fable 2 video.
- Rare bringing back one of their classics (I don’t think it’ll be Killer Instinct, for the record).
- At least one current PS3 exclusive coming to 360.
- Shenmue III. Please? If enough of us believe they’ll have to do it.
Nintendo
- Lots and lots and lots of sales graphs.
- Animal Crossing Wii shown and it’ll be a kind of walled-garden MMO: you live in your town with friends over the net, using WiiConnect24 to let anyone mess around in the persistent town at any time. Ban this sick burglary simulator!
- Mario Kart Wii.
- More Smash Bros shown, with a new feature that we haven’t seen. I’ll be upset if the Ouendan team isn’t in it. Sonic finally making it in is an outside bet.
- A new console for the Virtual Console. Neo-Geo?
- Miyamoto waves something around and Reggie has a new line for the fanboys to run into the ground for the next year.
Sony
- Absolutely no sales graphs whatsoever.
- $100/£75 off PS3.
- PSP redesign.
- Killzone 2 is finally shown and looks very good, albeit no E3 05 trailer.
- Home and LBP. Lots of comparisons to MySpace put me off it even more.
- Sony ruins their palindrome with the announcement of the force feedback Sixaxis. Shockaxis?
Any thoughts or predictions of your own are, of course, welcome.
It’s always a risk when deciding on your games of the year before 31st December (and especially before 25th December) that something will come along that could or should have made the list, had you only played it a month before. So instead of going back and messing with the whole list, here’s a handful of latecomers that deserve a mention and had a shout of making the list:
- Final Fantasy V Advance (GBA) – The first of two Final Fantasies, and one from back in the glory years which FFIV began a year earlier (yes, they used to make one a year). RPGs and portables often aren’t the best of bedfellows, but couple this with a Game Boy Micro and you have a top combination. A machine small enough for you to forget that you have it and a deep game that actually lets you make decent progress on the commute go together nicely, and it helps that this is one of the stronger instalments in the series. Bring on FFVI Advance in February!
- Final Fantasy XII (PS2) – FFXI aside, this is probably the biggest breaks from the formula for a major series that I’ve ever seen. At first I wasn’t completely convinced by the MMORPG influence (MMO combat is completely inane, and the only reason to do it is because it’s with real people – why would I play it with AI characters?), but a few hours in, once you have a party and the Gambit system in place, it just clicks. Had I played it earlier this could probably have made the top five.
- Viva Piñata (360) – If I was doing special awards this would have been a shoo-in for both surprise of the year and best game nobody played. I certainly expected it to be rubbish, but quite the contrary. Playing like a cross between The Sims and Animal Crossing (neither of which I’m a massive fan of, oddly), it’s surprisingly addictive and paced well enough that you never go long without unlocking a new Pi?ata or other item, ensuring that you have an incentive to keep playing. Best of all, it’s an Animal Crossing-style game that doesn’t use a real-time clock, so you sidestep the issue of having to go back to a weed-filled garden after a few days of downtime.
All of those are worth a look. And I’m so glad that bloody feature is out of the way for another year.
Now this is genius, and I just found it from listening to the latest episode of TWiT. It’s the audio from the live Windows Vista demonstration from CES where Microsoft were showing off the latest innovations that will be in the new Windows whenever that turns up. The twist is that the video shows all the same features in Mac OS X right now, and indeed since Tiger shipped way back in April 2005. There’s another one here showing yet more search and control functions that Mac users have been enjoying for the best part of a year.
Nice to see that Windows is staying as innovative as ever. Now I just need the money for a MacBook Pro…
