David Low – PALGN Executive Editor
While I was never too enamoured with the concept of E3, this year pretty much showed us that this form of the show doesn't work. With a far more limited scope then the bonanza of years past, third parties don't get as much air time, leaving the hardware companies an even more dominant voice. And it's clear their hearts are not in it anymore.
The biggest game announcement in terms of how many it will sell (Wii Sports Resort) wasn't much to be excited about given it's a party game that won't be released for another year. The next biggest announcement was that Final Fantasy XIII is now vapourware on two platforms instead of one.
Microsoft's presser played like a retailer meeting, focusing on the next sales season so as not to get too far ahead of themselves, and it was a reasonable effort, even if it was packed with games we already know about, multi-plats and (surprise, surprise) a bunch of shooters. Yet even with this they probably had the best overall showing. Nintendo, like last year, focused on using their presentation to try to get into the mainstream media, and to some extent it worked, with Wii Music getting the headlines of many major news outlets' entertainment technology sections. They know you're going to buy Zelda, and they know you know they're making one, so for better or worse they're using the opportunity for free publicity. Even given their focus, the Wii Music presentation went horribly wrong, and couldn't have made the game look good to anyone.
Sony had the most new, and they put on the best show, evidently desperate to avoid repeating the disorganised mess that was their legendary E3 2006 presentation. You would have thought they're learned their lessons about CG trailers, but I suppose that's accepted these days. The rest of their presentation played out them begging 'please give PS3 another chance'. The comparisons between the dominant PS2 and distant third PS3 were absolutely laughable at this point, no matter how nice the graphs looked.
Perhaps what was most notable was what we didn't see. There were strong rumours of a Microsoft Wii Remote which didn't show up at all, along with less substantiated predictions of a new DS, a new 'break apart' PS3 motion controller, a new Kid Icarus game, Halo 4... every major rumour was a no-show. It seems even Nintendo believed at least the Xbox Wii Remote rumour, as they pre-show countered with the not-really-ready Wii Motion Plus.
So why did nothing happen? It seems none of the hardware companies actually want to 'do' E3 anymore, but nobody is bold enough to take the step and drop out. Given their growing industry dominance and attitude to the event, it wouldn't be surprising if Nintendo took that step and opted out next year.
At least when 'The Big 3' trumpeted their sales no bad midi discordance was involved.
Jeremy Jastrzab – PALGN PR & Promotions Coordinator
Another E3 has come and gone… Wait, it actually was on? No seriously though, I don’t think that we’ll ever see E3 as the overflowing spectacle that it once was. Whether it’s due to a shift in the industry or simply a figment of our expectation, the E3 that we once knew is no longer here and we have to deal with this truncated version. Truth be told, the ones who lose out the most are people like us in Australia, where our only avenue was to follow the coverage the next day. However, for those who were actually at the event, while hectic, it would have been awesome to take for a spin.
If you are a “core” gamer, Microsoft had the best showing of a somewhat unremarkable bunch. Their major announcement was a real coup, that of landing Final Fantasy XIII. While only applying outside of Japan, the realisation that this will be the first canonical FF game to be a multiplatform release is something truly mind-boggling (and I’m not even a fan!). These are the sorts of things we expect from previous E3 shows, and apart from this, there wasn’t much else. This along with several XBLA announcements and the concrete showings and releases for Gears of War 2, Fable 2 and Resident Evil 5 saved the show from an interest stand point. However, their desperate grab for a slice of the casual pie with blatantly ripped off avatars and change in presentation is a cause for concern. Still, such a rip-off was inevitable at some point.
Nintendo are very hard to gauge at the moment. On the one hand they showed some necessary and good things, such as the overdue mic and Wii-motion plus, but at the same time, fans are probably confused over their standing in the industry. For the ‘core gamer’ the showing of games was awful and it certainly left me wondering whether the 'core audience' is still in their minds. Minor consolation comes with the Pikmin mentioning and the fact that Zelda and Mario teams are working, but not only have we heard this before, there is very little to look forward to in the near future, be it games, Virtual Console or even Wiiware. My hopes are still there, but are rapidly fading.
Sony had a solid showing, though again there are some questionable aspects. The PSP had a good showing as it shows signs of a minor revival in Japan, but is it too little, too late? We all know that God of War III and Killzone 2 are coming, and while I’m actually glad to see the latter in motion now, I don’t see the point of lifting a tiny bit of dress on something as big and well-known as God of War. MAG could prove to be interesting, though it’s purely conceptual at the moment. Not to mention Home is still nowhere to be seen and we have no idea when we’ll actually get it.
Have you noticed a trend yet? Where’s the new stuff!
But it’s not only the big guys that aren’t showing much. At the Capcom conference, the only thing they talked about was the Lost Planet movie. Other sizeable players such as Activision, Blizzard and Bungie weren’t even there. So the question has to be asked: just how much did we gain from this event? However, the main concern that remains is how the event is being treated by the major players in the industry. Now that the generation is in full swing, I’m somewhat surprised that at the lack of game announcements. We’ve all got our consoles and now we’re just waiting on some games. You could probably count the major announcements on both your hands, so it begs the question, where else are these things meant to be announced? Also, there were a startling number of things that didn’t get shown, so again, if not here, then where?
I don’t really see events such as Leipzig or TGS being that much bigger, where as individual events such as Ubidays seem to be fairly conservative as well. Frankly, things are heading down a path that I’m sure we’ll struggle to recognise, and its coming much sooner then you think…
Tristan Kalogeropoulos - PALGN Writer
It seems that times have changed. Like an unhealthy beast of an individual, obese and well on their way to diabetes, the old E3 has been whipped into shape. And while, when it was a plump, over-the-top spectacle of a creature, it was a sight to behold, its now more healthy life, filled with far less excess, is more equipped to cater to useful, more focused tasks. Unlike many I actually prefer the new E3. Especially as it’s far easier to get to the actual information than it used to be back when booth babes, sweaty nerds and over-the-top fanfare obscured the view.
The platform holders' press conferences were, mainly due to the lack of any real new hardware, a little dull. Besides the LittleBigPlanet financial report, the Final Fantasy XII going multiplatform announcement and the cringe worthy Wii Music demo (which would have been better had they had a couple of kids up on stage to demonstrate the game with the adults) there wasn’t a great deal to talk about.
While Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo were not really wowing anyone with much more than their sales reports, most of the other publishers had pretty amazing showing. The most impressive thing about the games we got to take a peak at was the large amount of original IPs. In an industry that bases most of what it does on franchises which have already proven themselves as far as sales go, it’s refreshing to see new ideas rising to the top. Mirrors Edge, Dead Space, Dragon Age and Mad World are just a few of the exciting new titles that we got to see. Heavy Rain was there too, but it’s a shame that it only got shown to a select few, and what was seen had a heavy embargo placed upon it.
This year also proved to be the year of the downloadable title. Games such as Flower, Siren, Geometry Wars 2, Galaga Legions and Fat Princess were all exciting to see and proved that there’s a lot of variety in what we can expect to get delivered via the internet in the coming year or so. The focus on these games points directly to the fact that as a distribution model we're only going to see more of it. It’s a shame that Nintendo again proved that their online offerings are an afterthought.
As David mentioned, unfortunately this E3 was also notable for what we didn’t see: an M.I.A. Alan Wake, Brutal Legend and mysterious Bungie game, no announcement of motion controllers for MS and Sony, an almost absent Games for Windows, and the list goes on. It’s hard to tell if this is an indicator of E3 becoming less important or whether business strategy has more to do with these no-shows.
Although the new format is great for press, my feeling is that it’s time for E3 to morph into something more akin to TGS with a day or two for media and another couple of the public. This would hopefully help bring back the big, noteworthy spectacle-like atmosphere that the event once had, while avoiding the ridiculous excesses of the past. If things don’t change I get the feeling that next year’s E3 may be the last, and instead the event will be replaced by individual publisher gatherings. Although they’re excellent showcases of what each company has to offer it would be a shame to see the gaming event that was once so successful get relegated to future ‘do you remember when’ conversations.
This year it was games like Mirror's Edge that got us excited rather than consoles.
Evan Stubbs - PALGN Writer
Countless words are being devoted by journalists about what '08 meant for E3, what will happen to E3 in '09, whether it's good for the industry or not, and so on. The reality? It's irrelevant. The biggest thing E3 has shown this year is that most publishers are finally learning how to market over the entire year, not just Q4 - this year's Q1 / Q2 release schedule has been quite possibly one of the strongest ever, and if E3's anything to go by, next year will be similar. Despite Peter Moore's, Simon Jeffery's, and Ray Maguire's pleas for an E3 of old, what we've seen this year is a fundamental industry shift in how games are going to be marketed in the future - less of a reliance on Christmas releases, and more of a staggered release schedule.
Nintendo's conference this year was all about sending a clear message to the other manufacturers - 'we own this space'. However, this may yet prove to be the first real misstep Nintendo's made this generation. By choosing to emphasise a peripheral with no clear physical relationship to the benefits it provides and a game that emphasises strong Japanese family values of community participation without competition, communicating the value of each to casual Western gamers will be a challenge. While neither of these is a significant enough issue to truly damage Nintendo over '09, they do open the potential for Microsoft and Sony to regain ground.
Microsoft, in their schizophrenic display of everything from the corest of core to the casualist of casual, may have unintentionally broadcast their biggest challenge of this generation. Despite having significant reputation issues around hardware reliability, they have the most complete offering of any of the manufacturers - their online content delivery and matchmaking is generally recognised as the most mature and full-featured, their hardware performance is largely indistinguishable from their nearest (and more expensive) competitor, their entry-level pricing is competitive with their cheapest competitor, and they have the most complete library of multi-platform and exclusive games available.
And yet, despite all these advantages, they're struggling to achieve the sell-through necessary to remain competitive through this entire life cycle. Microsoft's conference was all about communicating their understanding that while attracting core gamers is necessary to survive launch, unlocking long-term success requires to things - a low price and a wide selection of family-friendly games. It's these that turn an Xbox into a PlayStation 2.
By throwing everything other than the kitchen sink into their conference, Microsoft's trying furiously to communicate that they 'get it' now. Unfortunately, winning the hearts and minds of the casual market means going against the 360 messaging they've been pushing since launch - it's no longer a high performance, high-definition, hardcore console, it's now the biggest hardware reinvention ever, affordably designed for casual gamers and group participation. The question is, will the public buy this shift? And more importantly, is there enough time?
Sony's conference highlighted how tenuous their current position is. The once mighty manufacturer devoted a frightening amount of time begging customers to 'hang in there' for the solid games, emphasised a now aging-in-the-tooth portable console that's nearing end of life, and completely failed to show anything of true substance worth paying premium prices for. With the loss of yet another exclusive and their inability to announce aggressive price cuts, the value proposition of the PlayStation 3 to core and non-core gamers is even more questionable after E3 2008 than before it. However, brand counts for a lot, and just as Microsoft is struggling to change the perception of the 360 by consumers, Sony still has significant time before new purchasers start questioning the value of a PlayStation 3 purchase.
Daniel Golding – PALGN Writer
If E3 2008 says anything about the games industry, it’s that we’ve reached a point where the console manufacturers are becoming less and less important to the industry as a whole. Certainly, they’re still the ones to divide-and-conquer the market, and they’re still the ones who’ll hold all the aces when the next line of hardware are announced. The industry is still theirs, but if this year’s E3 is anything to go by, the spotlight is turning away from Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony as strict hardware developers, and onto the games themselves.
I don’t think I’m alone when I say that the conferences of the ‘big three’ were less than interesting this year. There were few surprises: Nintendo’s most interesting announcement came before their conference (Motion Plus), presumably anticipating a Microsoft motion peripheral that never came. The new Xbox 360 dashboard looks interesting, but not a vital upgrade. And Sony’s conference, while slick, was lacking any real information on (or even gameplay footage of) the big news: God of War 3 and MAG. There were even a few embarrassments: the Bungie no-show, apparently caused by Microsoft meddling, was like a train crash, and has surely killed any hype they had building. And the on-stage demonstration of Wii Music was quite possibly the most embarrassing games-related event I’ve witnessed in my life so far. Never again do I wish to see grown men holding a Wii Remote up to their lips while grooving to a bad MIDI rendition of the Mario theme.
Therefore, and even though there wasn’t a lot of new information out there, the third-party games were what was most interesting about E3 this year. Spore. Mirror’s Edge. The Force Unleashed. Bioware’s Dragon Age. Perhaps it’s just this stage of the console life-cycle, where games must speak for themselves, as by now we all have a fair idea of what song-and-dance the various consoles offer us. Nevertheless, I must admit that I’m almost no longer interested in what platform a game is available on, but rather, what the merits of the individual game are. And although we’ve recently been spoilt for quality, with gems like Bioshock, Portal, and Call of Duty 4 making their mark on the industry, I’m looking forward to late this year and early next with anticipation.
Then there’s the debate over the necessity of E3 in general. Admittedly, E3 has always been a very strange beast. All other entertainment industries have their yearly event, their night-of-nights, but it’s usually an award ceremony, not a preview-of-coming-attractions. Gamers do need some annual event or spectacle to look forward to. Maybe E3 isn’t it. Maybe, in a decade or so, a game awards event will take over, much like the Academy Awards began to do in the ‘50s. For the moment, it seems E3 is stuck between two evils: a spectacle of excess and fanboyism, or a dry and drab corporate event. Only time will tell if we can find a third path.
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