E3 Is A Bit Mental
I’m having trouble keeping up and I’m not even there. Nintendo and Sony have held their press conferences and I’ll be getting to them later in their own posts. but here are a few scraps I’ve gleaned so far.
First things first, a time check. It’s 10:20am on Thursday in my part of the world and L.A. is 8 hours behind me. This means that I have approximately 7 hours before the madness begins again.
A quick recap of the major events of Wednesday:
As well as Sony and Nintendo’s press conferences, there were also presentations by Electronic Arts, Activision, Konami and Midway. The hangar being used as the main conference hall was open for business but as I’m not actually in L.A. I don’t have first hand experience of what went on there.
Electronic Arts were showing off their Guitar Hero beater, Rock Band, announcing that full albums from bands such as The Who and Metallica will be available to download as playable entities. Lucky buggers who were there got a shot of the drum kit peripheral which will be available for the game.
EA were also keen to point out that they see casual gaming as a big opportunity. Whether this is because the casual sector of the videogame market is quite happy to put up with a “rinse and repeat” development philosophy, or because there are simply more casual gamers out there than there are hardcore and hence more cash available, is yet to be seen. Though EA Mobile and Pogo.com are EA’s main fronts in the battle to grab the casual gamer, Wii titles like Boogie and EA Playground look to enter the party game market and draw entire families into gaming.
Activision were showcasing their upcoming releases, including Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero III, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground. From what I’ve been reading, Call of Duty got the best reception, and from the video (see here)I can understand why. Try and spot the other sniper in the video, before he gets up.
After EA’s bigging up of Rock Band, Guitar Hero is beginning to look a little old with the third instalment seeming to be more of the same, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is looking good but is still without a release date.
Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground is more of the same again, with prettier pictures. Was EA’s CEO right about the industry, does no-one do anything original anymore?
Konami had a few bombshells to drop, the biggest of which being that the next Metal Gear Solid will be the last, but contrary to the rumours that have been flying around for the past few days, it will be a PS3 exclusive. The man who brought a touch of art to consoles, Hideo Kojima, said that all of the mysteries left unsolved by the series to date would get some resolution and the story would draw a close to the saga of Solid Snake. Fans of the series will be glean some hope from the idea that this may not be the last we see of Metal Gear, it was around before Solid Snake after all, and there may well be another series in the pipeline, albeit with a different director and central character. Konami also announced that Silent Hill 5 was on its way and would be available for both the PS3 and 360.
Midway used its presser to announce that user made mods for Unreal Tournament III on the PC would be available to download and play on the PS3 via the PlayStation Network. This is huge, mods of the Unreal series of games are massive on the PC and amateur developers are still churning them out for UT2003 after four years. This is mainly down to the accessibility of the tools and also the depth to which they allow the game mechanics to be manipulated. Epic Game’s Mark Rein said to Gamasutra that this move would “really yeild a lot of interesting stuff.” No kidding.
Also announced by Midway were 5 exclusive titles for Nintendo consoles spread across the Wii and DS and including a return to the Cruis’n franchise, and the latest in the Mortal Kombat series. They also revealed the voice talent for the upcoming John Woo directed game, Stranglehold, which sees Chow Yun Fat reprising the role he made his own in Woo’s Hard Boiled movie. Other voice talent was also announce but I’ve never heard of any of them.
Lucasarts was showing off Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga on the Wii. The first game which uses the remote to wield a lightsaber, though it uses fixed animations and isn’t the one to one translation which we’ve all been crying out for (that is still in the works apparently). MMO publisher NCsoft also announced the possibility of releasing future PC MMOG’s on the PS3 aswell, saying that they’ll be discussing which ones with Sony as they get nearer to release.
These are the biggest things which caught my eye form trawling the coverage provided by the following sites:
- Kotaku
- Gamasutra
- GamesIndustry.biz
- Ars Technica
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Posted on July 12, 2007 by Mandrill | Filed Under News, Previews
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[...] with Metal Gear Solid 5 and NCsoft announcements (See E3 Is A Bit Mental), Sony’s press conference was chock full of goodies including news about the PlayStation [...]