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If I were to rate the conferences on the first day of E3 2011 (Microsoft's, Sony's, EA's and Ubisoft's), the winner would have to be Sony. Not only did the corporation open in a humble manner, apologising for the PSN outage from the beginning, but they managed to keep up a consistent standard of presentation throughout the evening. Perhaps the biggest shock of Sony's conference was the price of the PlayStation Vita (formerly NGP), at $249 for the Wi-Fi model, clearly priced to compete directly with Nintendo's 3DS, also at $249. As well as this, the company showed of numerous games such as Uncharted 3 and Resistance 3, as well as several titles, including an unnamed BioShock title, for the Vita itself. From the looks of it, both graphically and in terms of fun, the Vita seems to be shaping up to really give Nintendo a run for its money.
Microsoft seemed to have more of a variation in its quality. While arguably it brought out the big guns, presenting a remade ‘’Halo’’ mid-way through the conference, and ending, almost predictably, on the big reveal of Halo 4, these were tempered by somewhat lackluster presentation, including a particularly cringeworthy demonstration of a Disneyland game for the Kinect, featuring two overly-excited children, finishing with “FIST BUMP!”. I don't even own an Xbox, but Xbox gamers, I feel your pain. The conferences from EA and Ubisoft were nothing special, their flagship titles having already been presented at the Microsoft and later Sony conference. Ubisoft made the dubious decision to open with a Shakespeare pun, asking “Ubi or not ubi”. What little un-cringed self I had left after the MS conference disappeared at that point. Despite this, presentation was interesting, playing up the company's 25-year anniversary with some retro-inspired idents for games.
I have always taken E3 with a pinch of salt. While it's the major US event for games publishers to share new projects and releases with the masses, it all boiled down to the hard sell. The presentation of the publisher conferences matters just as much as the products they're trying to market, and they don't always do the job well.
Microsoft played very close to its strengths this year; a user base with a high percentage of shooter enthusiasts (of which I am definitely not), and a still-developing market in the Kinect. Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft Entertainment, informed us early on that the exclusives this year would be Kinect-focused, and they definitely kept to that.
Ghost Recon used Kinect to create a very cool customisation system; but I feel it’s wasted on gun fetishism. That, and the gesture controls for the actual combat look entirely ridiculous. Most of the demographic for the Kinect are kids; so to demonstrate Kinect Disneyland Adventures and Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, rosy-cheeked children were wheeled on-stage. These brats are always annoyingly saccharine, but on the other hand, can you imagine these child-demographic games being demonstrated only by adults? Creepy.
Kinect Funlabs is a new e-store where you can download experimental Kinect software other developers have made. Microsoft did a good job of harnessing the ‘homebrew’ community. I hope we don't have to pay for downloads though. The conference was wrapped up with a short trailer for Halo 4; which caught me by surprise – developers Bungie said that after Halo Reach, they weren't intending to produce another main-series Halo game. So Microsoft may be using another developer to keep the cash cow running. Not cool.
Sony offered a much wider range of genres than Microsoft this time around, but they really pushed the PS3's 3D functions, just like how almost all of the 360 exclusives sported Kinect. Of course, the 3D effect was entirely wasted on us paupers watching the conference through the internet. There were a lot of solid titles that definitely garnered my interest. Uncharted 3, which was a bit moodier and grittier than I'd like still impressed me with its brighter action scenes in Arabia. inFamous 2 still has me incredibly hyped, but there was nothing that we didn’t already know. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time will hopefully be a great sequel to the PS2 games I remember fondly, but I’m sad they got rid of the cartoonish cel-shading.
Some of the games mentioned were not specifically Sony exclusives, but instead would have bonus content or Playstation Move functionality; which smacked of them being unconfident in the lineup of exclusives they had. Don’t sweat it Sony, you’re doing just fine. But next time you get 2K Games to demonstrate their next NBA 2K game, don’t have them go by halves. Kobe Bryant can’t hold a candle to the glorious Shaq.
The official announcement of the Sony Vita is a surprise to few (and I won’t bore you by repeating Cieran), but the lineup for release games is looking a lot stronger than the 3DS’ effort. Diablo-clone Ruin and fighter’s dream Street Fighter X Tekken are the titles that have me salivating, but then there’s no guarantee they’ll actually be available any time soon.
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