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| Six-hundred dollar hardware. Partially naked booth babes. A whole lot of Wii. Fan-boy central. Opinions that are formed by mostly nonsense. Press conferences that go on and on. Lots of noise and headaches and parties to make it all feel better. Lots of games that you'll never want to play. Lots of great games that will blow you away. Not enough surprises. Sequel after sequel. War and gun metal and first-person shooters. Welcome to E3 2006. | |||
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Dave Halverson editor in chief |
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Beginning with Sony, the most scrutinized of the big three, while drawing any technological conclusions based on a system's E3 debut would be futile, I do believe they had an amazing debut. Just as comparing last year's 360 offering to this year's is like night and day, future generations of PS3 games will obviously appear far superior, but that wasn't the issue regarding PS3. It's the price that has everyone in a tizzy. Sony is clearly after the early adopters, which outnumber the number of systems they'll likely be able to produce at launch by a wide margin. Find me a gamer who wouldn't donate blood to get a PS3 and I'll find you a vampire. When you're sitting on the number one console on planet Earth, which is enjoying its twilight years to record sales and some of the best games ever created, the need to release a low-priced next-generation product that will be outmoded in 24 months is the last thing on Sony's mind. That would be a very un-Sony-like thing to do. Releasing an ultra-high-powered games/multimedia/Blu-Ray DVD player for half of what a Blu-Ray DVD player costs alone however, seems quite apropos for the company that was instrumental in taking gaming from a cottage industry to an American pastime. As with any console, as the user base grows the price will shrink (likely when the PS2 stops stomping every other console into the ground) but for the time being, did people really expect to pay less than $500.00 for a machine housing seven cell processors that cost over a billion to develop? Not to mention the multimedia implications and the fact that developers will be unlocking the secrets of this machine for many years to come. It's likely that many a PS3 demo was running off of the core CPU, barely tapping the cells, if at all. Second-, third- (and so and so on) generation PS3 games are going to be pant-wetting, so stock up on Adult Depends. And let us not forget about the two A-Bombs Sony has in its arsenal; MGS4 and FFXIII.
Next up - Microsoft not only weathered the storm, they drove a semi right through it. Talk about a head start; in the past, launching first meant losing steam when the competition caught up, but this go-round, the Xbox 360 outshone the PS3, with games like BioShock and Gears of War and they have the opportunity to drop their price just as a pile of triple-A games hit at holiday, potentially stealing a lot of the PS3's fire. With a projected 4 million users on Live, Halo 3 and Fable 2 in the pipeline, along with a day and date release for GTA 4, Microsoft has a real opportunity to pull a similar coup on Sony, as Sega once did on Nintendo. The SNES was more powerful (or so they tell me, funny how much better Genesis games looked) but the Genesis won the race. I don't think Microsoft could have had a better show. Sony had no Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studios, or Sucker Punch game on the floor to challenge Microsoft's stellar '06/'07 cavalcade of power games. And finally we have the little Wii, perhaps the most brilliant of all next-generation gaming devices. Gaming has grown to such a size that in order to stay in the game, companies must recruit the mass market consumer, and once again - kids. Remember them? I do because E and T games are 90% of all I play. Sony and Microsoft have good strategies for mall-rats, but Nintendo will OWN the mass market, core gamers, and most importantly Japan, where they won't merely win the race but reinvigorate a stagnating market (outside of the DS). Gamers will own either a 360 and a Wii or a PS3 and a Wii... but single-console families on a budget, especially with kids, will own only a Wii. As much drool-inducing technology as I witnessed at E3, such as Bioshock, Heavenly Sword (which I predict will be the game to truly show the PS3s power early on) Gears of War and The Darkness, the first thing that pops into my head every morning is wanting to play Mario Galaxy and wax my friends and family at Wii Tennis. ...Under $250.00 with Mario and Zelda in the launch window and a completely new way to enjoy games whether you've been playing for 10 years or 10 minutes? Nintendo just took themselves out of "the war" and began waging a whole new battle without an opponent in sight. It's also worth noting that many a Wii game was running on GameCube, so we've yet to see what these games will look like come Q4. And finally, let us not forget our new best friends the PSP and DS, both of which are shining more brightly than anyone would have ever imagined. Beyond the preservation of 2D franchises like Castlevania and Ghosts 'n Goblins, innovation is alive and well on both systems. Can it be that E3 was a win-win-win-win-win? Wii. ...Oh, and by the way... I think the world has enough FPSs. Unless you're going to innovate (see The Darkness, Bioshock, or Condemned) please, enough already. Also...This is next gen. If you must make a garden-variety FPS, can I get some legs and feet - maybe a torso? Just a thought. I'd also like to point out that the continuation of TV and movie based games being as good, if not better than their source material is really making the mass consumer transition a whole lot easier to swallow. The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Eragon, Arthur and the Minimoys, Indiana Jones 2007, Lego Star Wars II, Cars, Justice League Heroes. Monster House... This is a trend I can definitely get used to. It also bears mention that while still jam packed E3 was much easier to navigate this year thanks to more stringent registration policies and less boobage... And finally, Kargoth of Barbaria needs a game... Hell; it needs a CG film, a toy line, and a trilogy of games. Catch the pilot on Adult Swim and tell me it's not the best cartoon since South Park... which still needs a great game by the way. |
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Brady Fiechter executive editor |
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E3 2006 left me with feelings of mostly... now what? It's hard to get too worked up with opinions about the games to come and the new systems that will drive them, simply because the information overload does a great job at short circuiting the objective side of your brain and goes straight into that fan-boy zone. Which is why I want a PlayStation 3 more than any system, simply because of the idea of it - that it's a successor to my favorite last-generation console, and it has games announced I want more than anything else, it's Blu-Ray, and I think the hardware will prove to be superior in the ways I desire.
If I'm the only one who enjoyed the admittedly suspect PlayStation 3's presence at E3 and Sony proves to have made a blunder - as people seem very ready to see happen - that leaves Microsoft and Nintendo to pick up the slack, which they will obviously have no problem doing. Xbox 360 had a great show (let's not forget how last year was just the opposite). Microsoft is set to have a superb year and make a lot of gamers very pleased. The system is out there, established, ready to rock; you know what you're getting into. As for the Wii... it's a much different story for me. Nintendo is aiming for an entirely different target this time out, and there's no way of knowing just how far outside the usual firing range they're willing to aim. I loved Mario Galaxy, and Mario Galaxy alone. Technological advancement is my friend; a new controller that ends up being more gimmick than real fun is not. I want to be intoxicated by my gaming experience more than entertained with fun, casual games. But Ninteno has always made magic, and I'm open for the Wii to strike with a grand wand. Who knows: That's what I say about E3 2006. |
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Greg Orlando senior editor |
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To be frank, I don't remember much about E3 2005. This is mostly intentional, and certainly not the result of vodka tonics.
E3 has always been a blur, a sort of three-day waking dream with pulsing lights and throbbing music, and too much sweat and too little deodorant. After three days of E3, I flee Los Angeles with a notebook filled with childish scrawls, one pair of feet oozing with blisters, and a sense that I don't know what it is, but I know I've never seen it before (with apologies to baseball player Richie Ashburn). Given enough time - say, 14 minutes - I can almost wholly forget and/or repress the experience. So, almost one month removed from E3, I am like some amnesia victim trying to piece together exactly what happened when I stepped into traffic. Soft, you. I do not mean to imply that looking at new games for three days is somehow a horrible experience demanding to be railed against. It is, in fact, a fine if dizzying way to spend 72 hours. My reaction is based solely on the overload of sights, sounds, and smells. Trying to process it all is like taking a right hook to the head, and I'm simply not quick enough to dodge. So. I remember thinking that Sony has some cojones for trying to push a $599 console on the masses, even if the thing is a Blu-Ray player, too. It seemed sort of silly to load up the PlayStation 3 with a lot of pretty-looking games such as Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, Indiana Jones, and Assassin's Creed when people are going to have to take out a second mortgage on their houses to buy it. The Wii was much more economical and promising. Yet I still think it's probably asking a lot of gamers to make circle motions in order to stab their video game enemies for hours on end. My great dilemma, as it pertains to the Wii, is this: I like games, and I like doing stuff, but doing stuff while I'm playing games reeks of effort. I play games so I don't have to do stuff, and if I'm doing stuff while I'm playing games, well, then, I guess I'd rather do stuff that might actually get stuff done. Like shaking down small children or sending my money to Nigerians to ensure a big cash payoff down the road. There were games, too. While I was watching Viva Pi–ata at the Microsoft booth, a very official woman at a very respected press outlet asked a very serious question. "What is the message of the Viva Pinata cartoon?" she asked. I was very much struck by the seriousness of the question, before I was moved to blurt out the message was, in fact, buy stuff. Buy as much Viva Pi–ata merchandise as you can, or else baby Jesus will likely catch fire. I also remember part of the presentation where a Microsoft employee said you could breed pi–ata, and I felt vaguely uneasy for the rest of that day, don't tell me, I'll tell you. I loved BioShock and Mass Effect. Loco Roco was great. Lego Star Wars II seemed like it was great fun to play. I think Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 will look very pretty, but the thought of yet another round of dress-up sort of depresses me. It was very good fun when witless celebrity Paris Hilton showed up at E3 and got the name of her own game wrong. She called it Duke Nukem Forever. Can you believe that? And I don't think we'll ever be able to top the time Homer got the bucket glued to his head and Bart removed it with the power of faith. Most of all, though, I'll always remember the forgetting. |
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Casey Loe executive editor |
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We interviewed scores of industry players at this year's E3, and there was one point on which nearly everyone agreed: Nobody knows what the hell is going on in the industry. Sony's fumbles have left the industry without a clear leader, and it's now easy to envision scenarios in which any of the big three platforms could come out on top.
The Xbox 360 enjoyed the fruits of its early launch, dominating the show floor with gorgeous second-generation titles. But its over-reliance on the FPS genre and dismal sales in Japan suggest the platform may have trouble breaking into the mainstream. The Wii was the talk of the show, and the three-hour lines suggest that Nintendo's strategy holds even more appeal for hardcore gamers than for the mainstream crowd the system was ostensibly designed for. But the last-generation graphics remain a major hurdle for the system - even the Wii's under-$250 launch price could seem steep if it's perceived as nothing more than a slightly enhanced GameCube with a new controller. The PlayStation 3 debut was a disappointment, but not necessarily a disaster - after all, the 360 wasn't looking so hot last year at this point. But Sony now has to surmount the triple hurdles of an exorbitant price tag, an underwhelming launch line-up, and the loss of credibility that comes from over-promising and under-delivering. But Sony is right about one thing: There are plenty of wealthy Sony fans who will gladly shell out $600 on launch day. Then, with so much riding on the success of the PS3 and Blu-Ray, Sony will likely bite the bullet and slash the price in time for late-2007 hardware-movers like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII. So what does the future hold? The longest, fiercest, and strangest hardware war in the history of the industry. And a whole hell of a lot of Nintendo DS games, since that platform is the only safe bet left in the video game industry. Enjoy. |
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Eric L. Patterson contributing editor |
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Knowing that my fellow Play staffers would be going in-depth with all of the "must see" blockbusters of the show, I decided to use some of my time on the E3 show floor checking out some of the smaller, lesser known games that were out and about. What I found was a very surprising amount of, well, surprises, games that I had never expected to hear about coming our way anytime soon, if ever.
One of the biggest surprises for me was Rule of Rose, a SCEJ-published survival horror game about a teenager named Jennifer who gets mixed up with a sadistic group of young girls at a boarding house. Due to some of the more risque storyline elements of the game, I fully expected never to see it released in the States; not only is Atlus bringing it to us, however, but they're bringing it over without any sort of editing being done. The other shocker was Cooking Mama, a DS title coming to us this Autumn from Majesco. The DS has been home to a number of "genre busting" games, but I was certain this one was just a little too Japanese for us Americans. Using the stylus and microphone, you prepare and mix different ingredients to cook up various Japanese dishes, arrange them once finished, and receive a score on your cooking and presentation skills. A game like that is actually coming out over here? So cool, and a perfect example of just how much of a boon the NintendoDS is to expanding the U.S. game market and bringing it ever more variety and options to satisfy every type of gamer (and even non-gamer) out there. Of course, the surprises didn't stop there. Cult classic Japanese NDS game Ouendan coming over as Elite Beat Agents? Atlus (yet again) showing why they get so much love from fans by bringing over Touch Detective? Atari's retro-cool Wario Ware homage Hot PXL? Just a few of the surprises that were in store for my adventures at E3. What also made me walk away from E3 a bit surprised was the change I went through during the show in regards to my expectations for what I really wanted. For a while now, I've longed for the "next gen" systems to get here as soon as possible, so that current get could be laid to rest and we could move on to bigger and better things. Yet, what I came away being the most excited about wasn't the power of the PS3, or the uniqueness of the Wii, or the growing library of great games for the Xbox 360; it was, instead, the PlayStation 2 and the NintendoDS. The PS2 still has so many great games still to come - Persona 3, Valkyrie Profile: Slimeria, Final Fantasy XII, Okami, and many I'm forgetting - and with the system starting to get long in the tooth, we're going to see more of those lower priced, wacky games coming over that I do so enjoy. NintendoDS, fuggetaboutit: I'm going to go so, so broke with how much good stuff this little handheld is going to be getting in the near and distant future. That's not to say that there weren't any games for the shiny new consoles to look forward to, because there certainly are, but outside of Capcom's heavenly zombie killfest Dead Rising, and the deep sense of joy I feel every time I watch the Heavy Rain trailer, I've come to understand and be okay with the fact that if I don't jump into the next-gen pool right away, I'll survive. I'm looking forward to the day I finally break down, get my HDTV, and have my senses blown away from visual and audio delights; for a little while longer, though, the consoles currently sitting around my home, which have given me so much love for so long, still have a little more love to give. Oh yeah... there was even a PC game or two that warmed my console gamer heart. At the top of that list was Audition, from Korean publisher Yedang, which can best be described as an online Bust a Groove. Hugely popular in China and Korea, the game will hopefully be hitting retail shelves over here some time later this year, and will contain over 300 songs, with a selection of popular English tracks (licensed for the U.S. release) being added to the roster of great Korean music (which thankfully they decided not to ditch.) I'd better finish all of that up by October, however: once Phantasy Star Universe hits, all other games may as well stop existing. |
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Nick Des Barres japan editor |
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E3 2006 went a little something like this. Sony: Lackluster. Nintendo: Wha...? Microsoft: Not bad at all. I had hoped against hope Sony would come out with guns blazing, ready to annihilate all comers with the power of sheer technology. Though MGS4 and FFXIII were predictably mindblowing, all the playable games felt like tech demos (with a few exceptions, such as Assassin's Creed), clearly long months from completion. There's no doubt PS3 will eventually bring us delights beyond comprehension, but despite the delay it still feels like hardware that's arriving one year too early. Something tells me it won't be until late 2007/early 2008 that we really start seeing magic on the platform, and the situation at E3 only seemed to confirm this suspicion. Oh, and yeah, it's expensive.
Wii is, for me, still a giant question mark. Sure, I played everything there was to play, and it was most definitely a new, and at times, exhilarating, experience. But it remains to be seen whether I can hang with waving my arms around like a hashed-up dervish for more than thirty minutes at a time, and games with a complex control scheme, like Zelda, will clearly have an extreme learning curve. Nintendo talks about luring in non-gamers, but with games this difficult to control one wonders just how effective that strategy will be. Then there are those hardware specs...when you're rocking just slightly over one fifth the RAM of your competitors and a CPU slower than the original Xbox's (on paper), you're not going to be making a lot of HDTV-owning tech-heads happy. I'm cautiously optimistic about Wii, and there's no doubt its low price point will have it selling like hotcakes, but I'm going to need more than fifteen minutes at a god-awful trade show blinded by rock concert lighting and thumping techno to get my mind around it. The Xbox360 (notice I don't say Microsoft, as their first-party situation was mediocre at best) was perhaps the biggest surprise for me, as I was expecting very little. You see, I'm just not big on FPSes and sports games. The platform was saved, however, by an encouragingly exciting third-party lineup, replete with an unexpectedly strong Japanese roster. I can say with complete honestly that the first Xbox had, over its entire lifespan, perhaps five games I truly cared about. There were double that many on 360 at this show alone. Next-generation gaming will be defined by Xbox360 over the next year or so, and I'm saying "bring it on." Our little buddies DS and PSP are not to be forgotten, either, as both fairly exploded with software aimed at both the nostalgia-driven old school gamer (Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, Castlevania) and those seeking innovation (Touch Detective, Loco Roco). Gaming in 2006 has reached the point where handhelds are virtually indispensible -- a far cry from the GameBoy days when I barely touched them. (I still wish they were playable on televisions, of course...) E3 2006 may not have been the punch-to-the-face Advent of Next-Generation -- not quite yet -- but it hinted at many good things to come. All three platforms look set to provide wonders galore, and for the first time since SNES/Genesis we may actually see a market in which multiple systems can coexist, each in their own niche. Nothing but good times ahead, folks! |
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Mike Griffin pc editor |
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As E3 2006 confirmed, there is plenty of quality gaming lined up for PC across this year and into 2007. We've had great material like Guild Wars Factions, HoMM V and Half-Life 2: Episode 1 to kick off summer, and we'll be tying knots on a string of high-potential releases like Titan Quest and Tabula Rasa (beta) leading up to a blitzkrieg of goodies this fall: Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, Company of Heroes, Quake Wars, Neverwinter Nights 2 and closer to the end of the year it's addiction-on-tap with Battlefield 2142. The complexion of PC gaming, however, as a platform, changes slightly moving into 2007.
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced the delay of its next PC operating system, Windows Vista, moving the release date up to early '07. Plans were amended during E3 as Microsoft unexpectedly introduced its Vista/Xbox 360 dual release platform plan, suggesting some of their own forthcoming titles would release for both platforms simultaneously and encouraging third-party developers to do the same. It's an interesting new spin, considering Vista's delay. On one hand, this is inevitably a direction the industry is going: serious next-gen productions require serious resources to assemble, given the HD nature of all assets. By encouraging developers to release Xbox 360 and Windows Vista versions of the same title, Microsoft gets to double-dip across two platforms, expand their Live services to PC gaming, and quickly adding to the Vista catalog. Meanwhile, developers can streamline their pipeline - especially if they're working on 360/PC only and not adding the PS3's tricky libraries to the mix. On the other hand, by the time Vista ships, hardware will have scaled up considerably on the PC side of things and players will be looking for powerful PC exclusives that leverage the new OS and its DirectX 10. Though a quick glance at release calendars confirms that there's no lack of PC-exclusives coming over the next year, Microsoft's aggressive Vista/360 plan may indeed change the PC gaming landscape next year. We're still not 100% sure if all genres will work in a PC-to-360 multiplayer capacity. For example, until a new and definitive control solution arrives for first person shooters, PC gamers on high-end mouse and keyboard set-ups will always have the advantage in this genre. There's simply no better way to conduct one's gameplay in this perspective. Dumbing down the aiming with an auto lock-on feature to match console versions would likely evoke disbelief among PC gamers. Developers like Webzen are now beginning to realize this, and their flagship online shooter Huxley will now be tailoring its action-based gameplay to players on the same platform, while certain social elements will carry across both PC and 360. Conversely, the finest third-person platformers and action-adventure titles have traditionally reigned supreme on console, and Vista gamers will be encouraged to snag an Xbox 360 controller to really take advantage of such titles. As of this Christmas season, the industry will be supporting approximately ten gaming platforms, and all signs indicate that consumers will happily sustain sales across PC, consoles, handhelds and mobile for years to come. With sales of $10 billion expected by 2008 from online subscriptions and micro-transactions alone, it would appear as though the entire industry is poised for growth in new directions and the PC is extremely well-equipped to ride the wave. |
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