E3 2009 - Commentary
Nintendo and Sony Nintendo's marketing lady telling us how Nintendo is printing money. Nintendo and Sony were both quite light on material that would interest a PC gamer. Nintendo was actually quite light on material that would interest a gamer of any kind. After selling gazillion Wii Fit balance boards they have pretty much lost their minds. "Wii Vitality Sensor"? You. Gotta. Be. Kidding. Me. Okay, I'll probably end up buying Super Mario Galaxy 2 and the new Metroid game looks enticing. Beyond that, Wii has very little to offer that would interest me. If Wii Sports Resort bundle is the no-brainer way to obtain the MotionPlus addon, maybe that as well, but after being burned by Wii Play, I want to see more first. In any case, for a more serious gamer, Wii is still a weak platform. Of course Nintendo doesn't care - they are swimming in money with the current strategy. Nintendo DS is a nice diversion on long trips and it is good to hear that it is getting some nice RPGs. Bonus points for that - at least Nintendo is sticking to what works in a pocket gaming console instead of squeezing big titles from their main console to pocket size. Yes, Sony, I'm looking at you. There is no point in making Metal Gear Solid or Gran Turismo for the PSP. Pocket-sized consoles are no good for games like that. Get a clue. Wasting Polyphony Digital's time on such junk instead of concentrating on Gran Turismo 5 that might actually make me (and many others) to buy a PS3 is silly. Oh, I'm sure they have separate development teams and everything, but it is yet another case of showing off a new game before finishing the previous one. At this rate in ten years we have Sony announcing Gran Turismo 10 while we are busy waiting for Gran Turismo 7 on the PS4 or something...  The Last Guardian looked beautiful in motion and no screenshot can make justice. As for the rest of the Sony offerings - being a fan of ICO and Shadow of Colossus on the PS2, I must say that the already-leaked trailer of The Last Guardian raised the probability that I will one day own a PS3 more than anything else shown by Sony. Final Fantasy XIV was a bit of a "bombshell" - why on earth would you announce a new Final Fantasy game before even the previous one is in stores. Of course once the "Online" bit was revealed, it all became clear. Final Fantasy XI Online is rapidly becoming obsolete and if Square-Enix wants to stay in the MMO market, they have to make a new game. Looks interesting and a PC version is coming as well. Let's hope they can offer more compelling gameplay than the grind fest that was Final Fantasy XI. Otherwise Sony's show was bit weak. Big business news were to the tune of "PS2 is still selling like nuts, which is nice because we don't want to talk how badly PS3 is selling" and the PSP GO is, like everything Sony does, overpriced. At least Sony is now officially dumping the silly UMD and with PSP GO they are taking a step towards the inevitable future where retail stores go join the dinosaurs and everything is a digital download. Sony's "me too" motion control thingy was a mixture of Wiimote and camera-based system, but like Microsoft, they didn't show anything that would make me want one just yet. When Nintendo revealed Wiimote, they showed how it worked in games and that sold the idea. Granted, Sony's version is a lot more beliveable than the pipe dream shown by Microsoft. On the other hand, if Microsoft can get their vision to reality, Sony's thing will be obsolete. I will be waiting for the first sign of something resembling a game taking advantage of these new technologies. The big game reveal from Sony, the announcement of a Rockstar PS3 exclusive "Agent", was one of those "what were they thinking...?" moments. You do not drop lines like "Rockstar" and "PS3 exclusive", and then show nothing. If you have nothing, keep your mouth shut and wait until you have something to show. That was unbelievably lame. Last year with MAG they at least had a mock-up trailer to go.
Speaking of MAG, what they showed was not running smoothly. I'm still not buying it that they can pull off playable 256 player battles on the consoles while keeping the framerate acceptable and network lag effects to gameplay to a minimum - and in any case, I'd never play a FPS on a console, so the whole discussion on the merits of MAG is mostly academic. God of War III didn't impress me much. Not quite sure why... it just seemed unimpressive. I'm sure the PS3 fanboys will now burn me on the stake, but that was my first impression. It is as if they had done nothing to advance the concept and instead just redone the previous two games with upgraded visuals. I'm sure it will sell by the bucketload. Microsoft vs. Sony vs. NintendoThe winner of the three-way grudge match of E3 press conferences in 2009 is Microsoft. They showed games that gamers want to play, they showed them, instead of talking crap. Also, even if Project Natal seems like something that they probably won't be able to pull off to the degree that the rigged demos imply, at least they are not afraid to spend some serious coin on true research towards advancing the technology. Demerits to Microsoft for forgetting the PC completely. I know, you don't really have the budget to make Games for Windows LIVE to not suck, but at least you could try to pretend that you care about Windows gaming. As for Sony vs. Nintendo, at least Sony is still aiming their wares mostly at gamers even if their platform is taking a beating for being overpriced. Sony is getting close to a point where PS3 offers enough interesting games not available on other platforms so that I might consider buying the black box. The only thing that was missing was the PS3 price cut. I guess they chose to wait until fall to get maximum impact for the holiday season. Overall E3 has been quite disappointing from the viewpoint of a PC gamer. Part of it is the fact that E3 is all about promoting games for the mainstream consumers and part is the sheer practical aspect - it is infinitely easier to demo a multiplatform game on a Xbox 360 devkit that it is to do the same on the PC, so games that are also coming to PC are almost universally demoed on consoles. The lack of PC-specific games is a worrying trend but thats what you get with today's ballooning development budgets. Everything gets molded to the console form in order to maximize total unit sales.
What did you think about E3 2009? Which games you are looking foward to? If you wish to comment on this article, please click right here (registration not required).
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