The Electronics and Entertainment Expo has wrapped up for 2012, filled with new game announcements, new tech, and unfortunately some let-downs. So here is a brief summary of the major press conferences and their respective announcements, with a bunch of my own opinions thrown in. This is in no way a complete summary, so if you are interested in any of the press conferences, you can watch them all online.
Microsoft
Halo 4 opened the show with another great live action trailer, before transitioning into a live demo, and CGI trailer. Unfortunately we have yet to hear about the next gen replacement for the Xbox 360, and this E3 did not provide any answers, announcements, or hints of new development. But you really can’t blame Microsoft for continuing to push the 360 until the last possible moment. One of the big sales announcements was that the Xbox 360 has not only claimed the title of the best-selling console in North America, but now the whole world. That is a pretty major accomplishment, and I don’t see Microsoft announcing a new console too early in its development cycle when it could negatively affect sales of the 360. Wouldn’t it be crazy if Microsoft pulled the same kind of trick with the next Xbox as they did with the Xbox 360 slim – even though people knew about the system for a while before it was announced I don’t think many people would have predicted that the new system would be on sale the Very Next Day. This is in a marketing-based world where you have huge development schedules (after all, the Nintendo Wii U was announced last year, and we still aren’t sure about complete system hardware specs). I just have to make a quick observation that Don Mattrick, President of Interactive Entertainment, has a very interesting presentation style. He keeps making weird pauses like he is expecting people to laugh at his joke (that wasn’t funny) or cheer for an announcement. It’s kind of funny – anyway, back to the conference.
Another big thing that everyone is talking about (whether good or bad) is Kinect integration. In the demo of Splinter Cell: Blacklist for example you can hang suspended from a ledge and lure an enemy over by saying “Hey, you!” and Kinect will use voice recognition and trigger the in-game action. Of course this could be done using a single button, but where’s the fun in that – much better to use a $150 microphone. EA Sports also showed a bunch of Kinect integration, but luckily most things are going with the “Better With Kinect” moniker, rather than making a full Kinect game. Of course, I think having FIFA pick up your swearing at the ref’s call and actually commenting on it along with an animation of the player’s dissatisfaction. In FIFA and Madden, I think it is really neat that you can actually choose plays and call out specific players. This could actually be a neat feature, but why can’t it be implemented with the standard microphone?
The other really big news from Microsoft was the announcement of Smartglass tablet technology, which can be used on pre-existing devices using Windows 8, Apple, and Android products. While watching a movie on one device, the others can display additional content to supplement the movie. It sounds really interesting, but I wonder about lag problems and the effect on your device’s battery life – I hope this program isn’t always running in the background wasting resources. The final big tech announcement is that Internet Explorer is coming out on Xbox, using Kinect and Smartglass tech. Of course Internet Explorer is one of the most hated browsers, but we’ll have to make due I guess.
Sony
Sony had much more of an emphasis on games than on entertainment like Microsoft, though they also had their own tech announcements. The big new product they are pushing now is called Wonder books, and it is kind of like a super pop-up book. The peripheral interacts with the Sony Eye Camera to pick up movement of the player and display images on the screen which are based on the 3D location and orientation of the Wonder book in the player’s hands. While I think this is a really neat idea I don’t really see much potential for it beyond kids type pop-up games, because it will naturally fall victim to the kind of 3D lag and inaccuracy that the Kinect suffers from. The device was shown with a demo of a new Harry Potter game titled Book of Spells, where the player learns and performs spells from a magic book, while waving a wand over top of the book. Here is something where I would have expected the ‘wand’ controller to use the Move 3D system for increased accuracy, but the demo just used a plastic stick type controller, so the book itself must act in some way as a sensor or the Eye camera may just be looking for general movement like it did before the Move came out.
That is another difference between Sony and Microsoft, while a ton of Xbox games are coming out specifically for Kinect or enhanced with Kinect, Sony seems to have almost abandoned the Move system. This can’t be good news for Sony, but I can’t help but feel a little justified when I point out that I said Kinect would succeed (in a kid-focused way it seems) while Move would suffer from the increased cost. This is something that I think will also cause problems for this new Wonder Book product, because it is another piece of equipment that you need to buy (plus needing a PlayStation Eye Camera of course). This is where I think Microsoft went the better route with Smartglass, creating a technology that can be used on a player’s existing devices, it doesn’t need another peripheral, and it doesn’t even require a Windows Phone. The mentality of giving people a great experience without nickel and dime-ing them for every piece of it is one that I prefer in marketing, and one that will normally get more support.
Sony definitely seems to be putting effort into the PS Vita, which is a definite requirement if they don’t want the system to become the same mediocre product that the PSP was. Special versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Assassin’s Creed 3 are being released which should hopefully help bring Sony back to a point of actually making money. Sony hasn’t shown anything about a PS4 yet (it’s definitely much easier to predict the name of the new Playstation than it is for the Xbox 720?) but I think they definitely need to push to gain back some of the popularity they had before the hacking fiasco and the Move failure. People beyond the Playstation fanboys need to be excited, because right now the standard comments on most internet threads basically just de-evolve into stereotype-based insults.
Nintendo
Besides the funny Pikmin opening with all the little Pikmin helping Miyamoto plan out his outfit, and walk all across the audience, nothing else was really all that exciting. Of course the large focus was on Wii U, the new console with the potential to be another huge shift in the gaming market. One of the points that Nintendo is trying to push with the Wii U is that the system is no longer reliant on a TV, you aren’t stopped from playing because someone else is using the TV, and you don’t have to wait for the TV to power on to see the image (personally this has never been a critical point for me when buying a gaming system, but I’ll let them have their argument).
The announcement of Pikmin 3 was a great opportunity for Nintendo to show the functionality of the Wii U outside of the standard party style games we have seen. While the main controls use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, the Wii U Gamepad shows the entire map allowing you to plan out your strategy as well as pan, zoom and direct Pikmin with greater accuracy. I don’t know how effective this interaction is going to be, considering switching between a two handed controller gamepad, and two one handed controllers is not going to be feasible in a short amount of time – critical in a boss battle for example. I am definitely interested to see how Nintendo approaches this new system, especially when it comes to which type of control becomes dominant. If you can still use the existing Wii controllers with the new system and don’t need the gamepad then what is the point of upgrading to the new system, and do you really want to sideline the main distinguishing feature of your console? But then if you mainly use the Wii U Gamepad then I would really like it to be a more ergonomic shape like the Xbox 360 or PS3 controllers, so that then defeats the point of having a full gaming console. The new Wii U hardware would not be necessary to create great visuals on a screen that size, but Nintendo’s big marketing point is based on how it frees you from a TV. There are still a ton of questions, and we’ve already known about the system for a substantial amount of time. I am kind of worried about the new system, especially in light of how Nintendo has been faring in the market recently, and whether people will actually make the jump to the new console when so many of them are in the ‘casual’ market – seniors’ homes aren’t going to have the need to replace Wii bowling with an HD version any time soon.
So that is my synopsis and impressions of the big three at E3. Again, if you are interested in seeing the full press conference for any of these three, or the press conferences for other companies you can head to their respective websites or check out www.g4tv.com/e3-2012/ for all the company press conferences and specific trailers. Enjoy the show, and Keep on Gaming.
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