E3 2009 - Commentary
Electronic ArtsThe second big event was the EA show. This time PC actually existed, at least until EA Sports got into the limelight. The biggest PC-related news was that EA thinks PC is useful for Online Franchise features and sports game related web apps, but the actual games are still nowhere to be seen on the PC. The only PC sports title was Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online and that one was browser-based. No word yet if it will be based on subscriptions or microtransactions, but either way if this is the way EA will publish sport games on the PC from now on... count me out. Any browser-based game will always aim for the lowest common denominator in hardware.
EA also seems to be dipping into Nintendo territory with games like Littlest PetShop (and Littlest PetShop Online on the PC). I'm not part of the target audience, so I guess I'm biased when I display my general dislike towards these offerings. Same is true for Charm Girls Club. I'm sure someone buys games like this, so more power to EA if they can make money this way as well. PC GamesEA had some actual PC games as well. Unfortunately there was nothing new. We already knew that Dante's Inferno, Need for Speed: Shift, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic etc. were coming. The fact that Mass Effect misses the holidays and is now scheduled for spring 2010 was the news. Need for Speed: Shift does look impressive and it could be the best driving game on the PC in a long while - definitely worth watching for.
Star Wars: The Old Republic trailer was epic and the announcement that the game would be fully voiced was ambitious for a MMO, but there is still no idea when it will come out. Will the hype cool down before Bioware has anything ready? The lack of detail on the actual gameplay points towards late 2010 or 2011 release, but who knows. APB being published by EA was somewhat unexpected. Then came the trailer that implied "100 players", and my enthusiasm for the title took a nosedive. I wanted a polished and fun MMO that isn't World of Warcraft, not a damn Guild Wars wannabe with guns. Based on information scourged from the web, individual servers will hold 10,000 players, but everything will be partitioned and instanced down so a single "city" is 100 players - and the details on gameplay point towards something resembling more like a semi-persistent FPS. I'm not saying you can't make a good game under these parameters and I'll reserve my final judgment until we know more, but for now if you were waiting for Grand Theft Auto MMO, better dial down those expectations. Crysis 2 was also announced, but Crytek failed to show anything beyond a fancy logo. Boooooo. Show, don't tell. It is also going to be multiplatform, so I have my doubts about the visual quality of the PC version - but I'll let Crytek to show something first before I rake them over the coals for it. Saboteur looked interesting, if a bit mundane. May be worth keeping on your radar if sandbox style action games are your thing. That was it?Overall, EA had a solid showing with a couple of cool bits (The Old Republic trailer being the highlight), but the presentation was lacking any major announcements. They have a full lineup for 2009 and a couple of interesting titles coming later on, but it all feels so... generic. Ubisoft Assassins Creed 2 is the main thing for Ubisoft in 2009 The less is said about Ubi's press conference the better. They wasted about 20 minutes of everyone's time by allowing James Cameron to babble about Avatar on stage without showing anything about the movie or the game. In the end all we got to see was a couple of screenshots that honestly were less than earth-shattering. Show, don't tell. Same theme continued throughout the press conference. Far too much people talking instead of showing things. Assassin's Creed II looked impressive (even if you had to wait until the Sony press event to see actual gameplay), and assuming they get the PC version out on time, it is one of the games I'm personally waiting for this year. As for R.U.S.E. - I guess it might be cool if you have a super-expensive Microsoft Surface table on hand, but otherwise it looked like your average generic RTS. The rest... fitness games, "tween" games for the MSN girl generation, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and those damn Raving Rabbids. All aimed for the consoles, of course.
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