Andy of Niall

E3 Day Zero Thoughts Posted on 2 June 2009 | Tagged games, e3 | Comments (1)

Like many good events, the official start of the Electronic Entertainment Expo is merely a formality - the numerous announcements surrounding the games industry start trickling in the build up. The day before the official opening is the real start of E3 - Microsoft, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts had their press conferences today, so there are already a number of large, potentionally industry changing, announcements out there. Below I have listed my thoughts on the one's that hold the most interest to me.

Firstly, the PSP Go rumours that had been going round the net were finally proved true when a leaked edition of Qore confirmed the news early. The PSP Go is a new model of PSP that drops the UMD drive for flash based internal storage (expandable by memory stick) and all digitally delivered content, along with a smaller form factor. To me, this serves two purposes - firstly, moving to all digital content is where we should all be heading. Most people moved from CDs to MP3s a long time ago, and it's about time we did that for games as well. The inconvenience of physical media compared to downloadable games is pretty huge, and the portable space avoids the problems of Internet bandwidth and storage space that restricts the mainstream consoles. It also helps alleviate the huge piracy problem Sony are facing with the PSP. Secondly, the PSP Go is about capturing a more casual market. By doing away with clunky discs and reducing the form factor, you alleviate some of the inconveniences that the core market might be willing to overlook, but the casual won't. The Nintendo DS and the iPhone have shown that there is a huge casual market out there to be won - whether Sony will be able to take a slice of that pie with the PSP Go will be interesting to see.

Monkey Island has long been one of my favourite gaming franchises. From the moment when I stuck in that floppy disk into my Amiga 600, and decided that I wanted to be a pirate, I knew I was in point-and-click adventure heaven. The genre has sadly all but disappeared these days, but Lucas Arts have given us some hopes with two new Monkey Island projects. The first, and by far the more interesting to me, is a special edition of the original Secret of Monkey Island. It looks to be very faithful to the original, with updated graphics and voice overs. Unfortunately for me, the only announced platforms are XBLA and PC - I lack both an Xbox 360 and a PC suitable for gaming, but I will find a way to play this revisited classic. It's worth it, even if it was just purely for the sword fighting insults. The second Monkey Island project is a new five part episodic title in the franchise, entitled 'Tales of Monkey Island. Not quite as excited for this one, as the later Monkey Island games weren't full of full blown awesomeness like the earlier titles, although still quite good. Only announced for PC and Wii (curse you fractured game market!), I will most likely find a way to play this one too.

Just a brief one, Wipeout HD has an announced expansion named 'Fury'. There goes another large portion of my life gone to high speed racing!

That accused count down on Kojima Productions site finally ended, and with it an announcement came at the Microsoft press conference of a new title in the Metal Gear franchise, called Metal Gear Solid Rising. Metal Gear sits with Final Fantasy for me as one of those must-play franchises, and I am absolutely nuts about it. This new title stars Raiden, the effeminate protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2 that everyone loved to hate on (mostly because of his insufficiency compared to the awesomeness that is Solid Snake), who got a ticket into the cool club in Metal Gear Solid 4 by becoming a bad ass cyborg ninja. Not much more information is available at the moment. It's only been officially announced for the Xbox 360, though with the lack of the word 'exclusive' at the Microsoft press conference, it's pretty safe to bet that it will appear on the PlayStation 3 as well. Metal Gear Solid has been a Sony exclusive for a long time now, it becoming multiplatform, joining Final Fantasy XIII, is telling of how expensive games are to make these days, and the general industry move away from third party platform exclusives.

The last announcement that piqued my interest was Microsoft's 'Project Natal'. In a nutshell, this is Microsoft's answer to the Wiimote. Traditional controllers scary away the casual market with their I-have-to-push-what-button-whereness. The Wii has proven, with some clever controls and clever marketing, that if you can provide an interface that is easy and engaging the casual crowd will flock. Wanting that market, Microsoft have revealed their answer - basically an EyeToy, but with a lot more impressive tech behind it. In many ways, the best controller is no controller, so all input is done by body movements picked up by the camera, and voice commands. Whether or not this will be successful will depend on a few things - firstly, whether the tech is as impressive as Microsoft are claiming it is. Secondly, it is up to the developers to come up with clever uses for this new technology. You only have to take a look at some of the early games using the PlayStation sixaxis controls to see that it's very easy to fall flat on your face when dealing with new control systems (I'm looking at you Lair). Thirdly, it'll need a good marketing campaign. Nintendo already had a strong presence in the casual market with the DS when the Wii came out, and followed it up with a strong marketing campaign to promote their slightly silly name to the masses who were yet to be taken in by gaming. I'm doubtful whether Microsoft, with it's reputation of stiff corporate-ness and core gaming market target, will be able to replicate this. Maybe I'll be suprised.

That's me for pre-E3 thoughts. Day one is tomorrow, and I'm hoping for some cool announcements from Sony (my choice of console for this generation was a PlayStation 3). おやすみなさい！