E3 2008 At a Glance, Big Three Press Conferences: Part 2, Nintendo & Sony
I will wrap it up on this one, as the Nintendo and Sony Conferences were lacking in content. So much so that is has been rumored that this was the cause for the Bungie announcement being delayed. Advanced apologies for the shortened coverage of these two, but as this is already three days after the fact I want to finish up here.
Haven’t read Part 1? Get it here.
Up Tuesday morning was Nintendo.
Starts off with a video and a promise. "We promise to keep the world smiling."
Apparently Nintendo employees can’t snowboard without breaking their wrists. Solution? A new game, and a Wii Balance Board. This is the thing that came with Wii Fit.
Numbers and generic games talk (i.e. Mario and Zelda games are in works).
Animal Crossing: City Folk. Its visiting function is greatly enhanced using the Wii’s network capabilities.
More numbers and sales talk. Slight game announcements. Like Wii Sports Resort.
Wii MotionPlus. Add on that adds more sensitivity to the WiiMote.
Wii Music. Make music with your Wii. I suppose that Rock Band purchase is making you feel silly now reader?
Wraps up with recaps and then a short bit on denouncing those that call the Wii a fad.
Neat, but lacking on big announcements. Still, the Wii is going strong, so Nintendo doesn’t really need to talk itself up much. They could have probably just walked on stage, announced a price cut, walked off, and shown game videos that have footage from the new games, and had a better keynote with less work. Still, this was decent, if not mind blowing.
Pikmin 3 was announced during the rest of E3. I wonder why it didn’t make its way to the conference?
Next up: Sony’s stuff.
Sony shoots out their stuff:
Generic game video. Talking starts:
"2008 is the year of the PS3."
Actually, do I even need to go on? This comment is a suicide note. It goes in line with "XXXX is the year of the Linux Desktop." Saying it will only make it not so.
Goes on to say more, "We’ve just begun to scratch the surface." Oh my… its another PS3 has ten year life span tirade.
Makes boast that MGS4 only being possible on the PS3, so even though its not exclusive (by contract) its only on the PS3. Note that even though I have doubted MGS4 for the 360 for some time, the possibility of it happening has just gone up in my mind based on this statement.
More talk wrapping up Sony’s arrogance intro.
Resistance 2. What could have been an awesome demo is just video touted to be from gameplay, something which Sony has been known to lie about. It further devolves into a hardware boast. So much for the intro’s talk of this year being about the software.
Goes into LittleBigPlanet. Much touted, little delivered, so its nice when instead of just leaving it to die, they use it to deliver their financials. Best delivery of what is normally boring and useless up talk to demo a game. LittleBigPlanet is a PowerPoint killer. Its very well done, making LittleBigPlanet more then just a tech demo or an overhyped garbage pile.
The LittleBigPlanet demo was so well done that you don’t even need to hear about any of the other PS3 announcements at E3. Screw Home, screw Trophies, screw pre-rendered videos being shown as in-game, screw generic PS3 and PSP game announcements, screw more HD space, screw the new Video Marketplace that is like the 360’s, and screw God of War III.
LittleBigPlanet. That is all you need to hear about the Sony announcements. If it can make financials even remotely interesting, then Sony has a winner.
Update: I think it should be worth noting the Sony’s MAG was all prerendered, not gameplay. However, you can check out some in-game stuff here. This should not detract from how awesome LittleBigPlanet was, so I didn’t post this complaint more in-depth earlier (well, that and I don’t like writing about stuff almost a week after the fact).
Jul 19th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
@ Yert,
Keep up the good work Yert. 🙂 Now that we’ve got the E3 coverage out of the way, we should set our sights on new things. What do you recommend, shoot me an email.
Jul 19th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Woah… thats very fanboyish of you when you say Sony conference lack content. LOL, they showed more new IP games than the other 2 combined. Little Big Planet is showcasing its flexibility with it being used instead of those boring Powerpoint. GOW III being revealed which is huge. Resistance 2 with 60 player online, 8 player -co-op is looking better than ever. They announced MAG from well-known SOCOM developer, Zipper. 256 player online, thats huge!
For Americans, they can download and actually buy off videos from the Videostore instead of renting from Live!
What else, oh yeah, the reason no JRPGs, is because traditionally, E3 is used to showcase western titles, if u want JRPGs, TGS 08 is your best bet from them.
Ironically, PSN takes a slash on Live! service, as premium service the latter is, it cant come close to support 60 players, let alone 256 players.
Jul 19th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
If you play MGS 4 on ps3, if the devs wanted it. They had to make drastic changes to the game (I am not talking about porting the code). Throughout the game, it says something “Warning, this game is exclusive to the PS3 system” and that Otacon makes fun of other consoles not having Blu-ray. The game even contains Apple products, so I can assure you it wont come.
Jul 20th, 2008 at 12:12 am
@ Adnan
How come you guys know so much about E3. *Sigh* Guess I should start reading those press releases now.
Stay tuned for my upcoming post about this MGS 4 rumor, it’s time to give it a smack down once and for all.
Jul 20th, 2008 at 5:47 am
@ Adnan
I personally think that this year Sony showed too few demos and too many videos. The “MAG” game was prerendered.
Buying videos is moot when you can just rent them with a subscription service.
LIVE can support massive amounts of players as well, such as MMOs like FFXI. Games like Halo are artificially limited to lower amounts of players for a style of gameplay.
On the MGS4 bit, MGS is a linear game. Any linear game can play across multiple disks, and with the 360 having the ability to download games now, it would be possible to install one disk for game engine work, and use multiple other disks across the story.
Granted, MGS4 is more like an interactive movie, much like JRPGs tend to be, and that is suited to lower RAM, higher disk storage architecture of the PS3 in conjunction with pre-rendered cut scenes typical of Japanese games.
I merely wished to make the point that statements like the one Sony made in regards to what is possible will only cause them pain. I’m not too sure MGS4 will ever make it to the Xbox, and even with my comment about it being more possible, I doubt it.
Jul 20th, 2008 at 7:20 am
You cant rent and buy moves from the Sony service, u can only rent it with Live! People been wanting to buy stuff from Live! or a long time, their DRM is slowly getting a fix.
I have been using PSN and used Live!, and I must say it really good. The only feature that is missing is voice channels, but they will add it soon.
“Teasers” are always pre-rendered…thats why its called a teaser… i dont know..to tease?
By technical aspects, of course it can come to 360, although multiple discs will make it very inconvenient. Also, throughout the game, it says PS3 exclusive, add apple products.. u have to change hell lot of stuff to get mgs 4 to 360.
Its a conference, they have to show video and they showed lots of live gameplay, Ted Price showed Resistance 2 gameplay, Little Big Planet was there throughout the show.
Jul 20th, 2008 at 7:21 am
And its very professional of you to “Screw” every Sony and Nintendo stuff.
Jul 20th, 2008 at 7:38 am
OH MY LORd….everything shown about Resistance 2 is pure gameplay, Sony never released a CG Resistance 2 video, even Ted Price (guy who’s team developed the game was playing in front of 1000s. I cant believe u guys dont have your facts right, or is the hatred that much? If this article was posted on N4G…. I would be really embarrassed Bangladeshi.
Jul 20th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
@ Adnan
Screw professional. I don’t get paid like a professional (i.e. salary), and I don’t work a nine to five.
I was making a point that Sony should have put yet more focus on LittleBigPlanet, because I was impressed by it. Never said anything about screw Nintendo at all.
Honestly, I have said time and again that I doubt MGS4 coming to the 360, and only made a point that Sony being arrogant about the game will only come back to bite them.
Edits; while I don’t seem to think that I have used any curse words (i.e. Giant Enemy Crab :P) I have retracted some of the more direct parts (i.e. telling someone to let it go) of this post. No hard feelings to anyone were ever meant.
Jul 20th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
@ Yert
Keep the
swearingpersonal attacks off the comments section please.Update: It’s nice to see you’ve moderated your own comment. 😉