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Preys-World - E3 a perspective

Thursday 17th of July, 2008 - 11:32:13 GMT

As we head into the final day of E3 2008 I thought now would be a good time to take a look back at the three console press conference and put down some of my thoughts on who did what right and what this means for the industry in the years ahead.

Let’s start with Microsoft as they were the first to have their conference. Much like last years the Xbox 360 conference had a wealth of games on display including Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5, Fallout 3, Fable 2, Banjo Kazooie 3, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and of course the massive announcement that Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the Xbox 360 as well as the PS3 in Europe and the US. Of the big three it does seem that Microsoft has the best line-up of software this winter.

The other big announcement from Microsoft was that they are redesigning the dashboard with the remit that they want to make it simpler and better. There was also the introduction of Avatars who will replace your Gamerpic as your personal identity whilst online. I reserve judgement on whether the redesign will be any good as it is hard to judge a UI without using it, but it does look like a cross between the Wii and PS3 interfaces. As for Avatars along with Lips, Microsoft’s answer to Singstar, and Live Party, a new way to group up and chat with your friends, Microsoft continue their drive to grab a slice of the ‘casual’ market that Nintendo has so successfully reached out to. However I feel that this is a waste of time for Microsoft as they just don’t have the software catalogue to back this kind of drive up. A few casual games is not suddenly going to get everyone rushing out and buying an Xbox 360, especially as most of them are already quite happy with their Wiis. Time and resources would be better spent concentrating on what they do best, appealing to ‘committed’ and ‘hardcore’ gamers.

So not a bad conference by Microsoft a strong line-up of games for the forth quarter without any real focus on what is coming next year, but then they did the exact same thing last year and it worked out pretty well for them.

Nintendo then, would they be able to top the surprise that was FFXIII or would it be another pretty uninspiring conference full of sales statistics, talk of how they have grown the market and lots of casual games. Well let’s take a look at the games they announced, that will give us a good idea of what their message was. So let’s see we have Animal Crossing: City Life, Wii Music, Shaun White Snowboarding (which uses the Wii balance board), Wii Speak which is a microphone that lets everyone in the room talk to a room full of other people in another part of the world, Wii Sports Resort featuring the Wii Motion Plus peripheral and that was about it. All those games are due out before the end of the year except Wii Sports Resort which is due next spring.

So for a second conference in a row Nintendo was all about the casuals. There was no mention of any new game from their stable of mascots or any game really that would appeal to their traditional fans, although in a round table interview on Wednesday Miyamoto did reveal that Nintendo is working on a new Pikmin game. It’s a shame that Nintendo seem to be so centred on one section of the market at the moment, true the majority of the people who use the Wii are ‘casuals’, but Nintendo wouldn’t be around as a company without the traditional gamers that have supported them throughout their lives and to ignore them completely seems pretty churlish and slightly dangerous. If this new ‘casual’ market turns out to be just a fad and they only end up just buying the Wii and don’t upgrade when the eventually successor comes out, if Nintendo have totally marginalised their core base who will they have left to turn to? Right now Nintendo is firmly sighted on the ‘casual’ market, but I feel they should at least throw their traditional fans a bone and announce something that will appeal to them just to let them know that they haven’t been forgotten about. As it stands right now Nintendo seems to only be interested in one type of gamer.

Finally we have Sony. Sony, Sony, Sony where did it all go so wrong. During the PS2 era your were top dog, all the big third party franchises were on your system, but slowly they have all flown the coop and gone multi-platform. First there was GTA IV, then Devil May Cry IV and now the biggest one of all Final Fantasy XIII. With the loss of such exclusive marquee titles a large reason to buy a PS3 over the Xbox 360 has disappeared and it is left to Sony’s first party studios to pick up the slack and so far they have failed to do so. Killzone 2; looks gorgeous, but will it be anything more than a pretty, but dull shooter? Infamous; could be good fun, but it looks a lot like Prototype. Resistance 2; online mode sounds like it could be interesting, but the singleplayer looks like more of the same and do we really need another Racthett and Clank game so soon after the last one. As for God of War 3 will it bring anything new to the genre or will it just be more of the same?

The only real ace Sony have up their sleeve is Little Big Planet and some of the levels they showed off looked pretty impressive and fun to play, but there is still concern about whether the community will pick the game up and run with it or whether there will just be a deluge of trash. However judging by some of the stuff that has been made using the Spore Creature Creator it looks like there are some talented individuals out there prepared to put in the time and create some good user created content, right now though Little Big Planet is all potential.

Aside from Little Big Planet the only real excitement games wise seems to be coming from the Playstation Network. Games like flOwer, Pixel Junk Eden, Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic are interesting and unique titles, but who wants to buy a £300 console to play downloadable games. When your big reveal is a game called MAG, which stands for Massive Action Game (please) and whose unique selling point seems to be ‘more people equals more fun’ you do have to worry about how Sony are going to get people to buy a Playstation 3 over an Xbox 360 especially as the latter continues to drop in price.


Overall I think Microsoft were the clear winner this year with a strong line-up of both third and first party software going into Q4, and the mega-ton bomb that was Final Fantasy XIII. Against that Sony didn’t really have anything genuinely exciting to tempt gamers to their system and Nintendo continued to plough their own little furrow and piss-off traditional fans. But the one overriding feeling I took away from all three press conferences and indeed E3 as a whole so far is that the industry continues to take a downward slide into mediocrity and blandness. Most of the titles announced were sequels that didn’t seem to add anything particularly new or just rehashes of already establish game mechanics dressed up in fancy graphics, and the way Microsoft ripped off Nintendo and Sony with their redesign of the dashboard and the introduction of Avatars was just symptomatic of the general lack of innovation in the industry right now. This kind of trend was inevitable to a certain extent as the industry grew and more money was put on the line, but there seems to be such a lack of innovation right now that I fear for the industry as a whole. If you couple this with the fact that the whole industry seems to be running after the ‘casual’ market then you can’t help but be just a little bit worried. The mass market is a fickle mistress and if people suddenly decide that computer games are ‘boring and sad’ once more then we could be in for a rough ride.

Overall then this E3 has filled me with a general feeling of malaise at the growing pile of mediocrity that the industry is producing and a sense of trepidation as we head into the middle of the current generation.



-Nat I