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E3 2008: Day Two Wrap-Up
E3 2008: Day Two Wrap-Up - Special Feature
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Day one has come and gone and Day two is upon us starting off with Nintendo's Press Conference is up first. Followed by Sony. So let's get right to it and see what Nintendo had to show.
Nintendo Press Conference
As the lights dim, everyone expected to good ole Reggie. Well, he didn't come out. Instead Cammie Dunnaway stepped on the stage. And she claimed that she was not Reggie. Well no kidding. She went into a conversation about how playing games is safer to do then going outside and playing. She went on to tell a tale about how she tried snow boarding for the first time and how she wiped out. This leads us to our first game: Shaun White's Snow Boarding. And who better to show this game off than gold medal winner Shaun White. He played a bit of it and showed how the game will use the balance board. After the short demo, he came on to the actual stage were Cammie proceeded to interview him. He talked about how he gave Ubi Soft, basically, dos and donts on how to make the game more realistic. Then, Cammie tried out the game. The game will be out by years end. Not really fun to watch, but mildly amusing. Moving on to Satoru Iwata hit the stage.
Now, if I got some info wrong, I apologize, he was kind of hard to understand. He basically came on the stage talking about "a paradigm change has taken place in gaming." He goes on to talk about what has changed. He talked about long shelf life of their titles and how certain games continue to show up in the top two0 sales chart worldwide. He stated that the teams that create Mario and Zelda games are both hard at work to bring new titles to the Wii. He goes on to basically say they are always looking to be pioneers and continue to innovate. At this point, Katsuya Eguchi is shown on the video screen to unveil Animal Crossing City Folk for the Wii. It's Animal Crossing but now with cities. A cool feature of this game is the beauty salon. Here, you can get a mask put on your character that will allow you to put the face of your Mii on your Animal Crossing character. But the biggest feature this game has to offer is voice chat. That's right. Nintendo finally announced voice chat. But it's not like you are used to. Animal Crossing will not come with a headset but, essentially, a speaker mic. This allows you to talk to everyone playing Animal Games. Expect to finally be able to talk to your friends (and the rest of the world) this fall.
Then, finally, Reggie came on the stage. He talked about how he is pleased on how the Wii and the DS are both selling. Wii sold 10 million units and the DS two0 million units...he's pleased, but not "satisfied." He talked a bit about the software sales and how it helped push hardware sales. He moved on to talk about how the software for the Wii is selling in the first 19 months of the Wii's life. He continues on and talks about third-party games are selling: 400,000 third-party games sold on the Wii. And the library is growing. This leads to the trailer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It pretty much focused on the light saber battles. The game will be out Holiday 2008. Then shown was Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party. This time around, the balance board will be implemented. The next trailer they showed was...wait for it...Call of Duty: World at War.
Really? Eh. So far, nothing too exciting. Just a lot of talk about how they are kicking everyone's ass. Any who, he continues by showing a stat that around 50% of females are the DS. It's good to see a company that cares about the fairer sex. Then, right off the heels of Guitar Hero on Tour, Reggie announced Guitar Hero on Tour Decades. Not too much was explained about this game or why it's called Decades. But they did say you can transfer songs between the two versions of the game. They did mention the fact that that Guitar Hero on Tour sold over 300,000 units in its first week. Also announced for the DS was Spore Creatures. And just like the PC version, you can share the creatures you create. And what would a Nintendo press conference be without the announcement of a new Pokemon game? Well, in my opinion, a better one. But that's just me. So, of course, a new Pokemon was announced for the DS. The last game revealed for the DS was, and this was kind of a surprise, Grand Theft Auto China Town Wars. This will take place in Liberty City and will be completely open-ended. Expect this game to ship this winter.
They also announced they are looking at new ways to use your DS. An example they gave was say you are at a baseball game. You are sitting there watching a game your probably don't care about (that's why you brought your DS) and you want to see the score of a game you do care about. Well, that's what they are trying to implement. So, we will see if that will actually come to fruition.
To the stage again was Reggie, and he talked about Wii Motion Plus, which gives the Wii-mote more precision to movement. And, of course, this new add-on couldn't be sold by itself. Nope. Instead it will be bundled with Wii Sports Resort. And from the new Wii Sports game, they showed off three of the mini games: A Frisbee game (you throw a Frisbee and have your dog go fetch it), a jet ski game and a sword fighting game. It will launch spring of next year. And finally, the camera panned to a guy who was sitting in a chair with a Wii-mote (with nunchuk attachment), playing air drums. Everything he did was shown on screen on a game. When his drum solo was over, Shigeru Miyamoto came on to the stage with a Wii-mote held close to his mouth. And his actions were also shown in a game...apparently he was simulating playing a saxophone. And this is how Wii Music was announced. And according to Mr. Miyamoto, you don't need to know anything about playing a musical instrument. All you pretty much need to know is how to hold the instrument you want to play and the Wii will catch on to what you are doing. Wii Music will feature 50 instruments and will support 4 player simultaneous co-op play. And to demonstrate this, they brought out two more Nintendo people and the four played the theme form, yup you guessed it, Mario. Expect it to release this Holiday season.
Reggie came out one final time to recap everything and to make a point. The word "fad" is no longer operable to describe the Wii or DS. And that's it. So, not a bad showing, but mediocre at best with only a few cool announcements. And a bunch of numbers thrown at us. Leaving us no doubt, that at this point, Nintendo is at top.
Sony Press Conference
Two down, one to go. And in my opinion, the one that needs to have a good show. So, without further ado, here's what Sony had to show.
The show starts out with a montage of games that will be coming out for the PS3 and the PSP. When that was over, Jack Tretton comes strolling out and gives a back story of the Playstation and how it all started. And states, like the PS2, the PS3 will be around for 10 years. But you already knew that, didn't you? He also says that 2008 is the year of the PS3. He goes into the Folding at Home project and how Blu-Ray won the HD format war. And stated that games like Metal Gear Solid 4 are only on the PS3 because they are only possible because of Blu-Ray. The focus of Sony this year will be software and that Sony has more exclusive titles than anyone else with over 75.
To kick off the PS3 side of things, a demo of Resistance was shown. One of the first things you see is a huge-ass monster. Just how big? Like really big. Like takes up almost the entire screen big. The whole point of the demo was for the main guy to find a way to beat big-ass monster. He starts off by shooting it with puny machine gun. And that didn't even phase it. No shit, right? Well then guy pulls out a rocket launcher. And normally rockets do some series damage...to smaller things. Not so much to this city sized creature. So guy needs to run like hell and find another way to beat it. So he runs into a building. And as he's running, you can see the monster peer at you through the windows of the building. Well he makes it up to the top of said building and for some stupid reason, fires another rocket at big monsters arm. Well, this didn't set too well with the big guy, and picks up our hero. Who then fires a rocket into big-n-nasty's mouth. This pissed him off and threw little guy. A lot. And that's pretty much the demo. The game looks freaking amazing. And apparently there will be bigger boss battles. If that's one of the first bosses, I can't wait to see what the other ones look like (and how big they are). After the demo, Ted Price was on stage and gave a kind of back story of Resistance and sets up the sequel. He gave us some info we already know, like 8 player co-op and 60 player online play. He then debuts a new trailer. This came will be a must have come November.
And now, back to Mr. Tretton. HE is going into the part I really hate...numbers. But he did in a way that made it really awesome to watch. The guys in charge of making Little Big Planet made a level that showed the year in review for Sony thus far. Words can't explain just how cool this was. You have to see it to fully appreciate it. Tretton wanted to make the presentation of numbers more exciting, and he did just that. This presentation showed off the potential that Little Big Planet truly has.
He announced the games that will be joining the Greatest Hits family. And they are: Resistance: Fall of Man, Motorstorm, Warhawk, Call of Duty 3, Fight Night, Need for Speed Carbon, Rainbow Six Vegas, Assassins Creed and Ninja Gaiden Sigma. All for $29.99.
We move on from the PS3 to talk about the PS2 for a bit. Which is on its 9th year. So according to Sony's 10 year plan, yup, the PS2 has one more year to go. They will be releasing an amazing 130 titles this year. And, of course, they showed some of these titles in a montage. Along with the montage, it was said that Buzz!, Sony's trivia game, will be hitting the PSP and the PS3. Apparently this game has sold pretty well....I didn't know that. Jack then said that Sony will be releasing a new PS2 bundle. The Lego Batman PS2 bundle will come with the PS2, Lego Batman and a copy of Justice League: New Frontier. The retail price is $149.99.
That's all the PS2 news. So we will move on to the next topic, the PSN. A new Ratchet and Clank game was shown. Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty will begin where Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction left off. The game will be available for download at the end of summer for a price tag of $14.99. Can you guess what happens next? If you said a PSN montage, you would be right. A few notable ones are Fat Princess, Siren Blood Curse and Ragdoll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic. After the wonderful montage, we see a bit of Gran Turismo TV. At this point I wasn't interested. At all. So all I picked up form this was you have to own Prologue and you have to pay to watch videos of racing crap.
Moving on to another thing I don't really care about (at least anymore) and that is HOME. The lovely Mr. Tretton promised that the experience of HOME will be rewarding when it finally comes out. SO for those of you who still care about it, there you go. A promise. Hold him to that. They then showed a video of the progress of HOME so far. And from watching it, nothing new was shown.
And, for whoever is reading this, tonight (July 15th) you will be able to download full length movies and TV shows on the PSN. And it goes one step above the 360....you will be able to actually purchase some movie titles and keep them as opposed to just renting them, which is all you can do on the 360. So, go and celebrate this by buying Cloverfield.
Next on Sony's checklist is the PSP. We will have a new PSP bundle available this fall. The Ratchet and Clank Size matters pack will come with a 1GB memory stick, voucher for Echochrome, copy of the Ratchet and Clank game, silver PSP and National Treasure: Book of Shadows on UMD. This will retail for a modest $199. Then we go to see Resistance for the PSP. It's a third-person shooter. Eh. Not too impressed with it. And then we were treated to yet another montage. Some notables were Madden, Star Wars Force Unleashed, Loco Roco 2, Patapon 2, Buzz Master, Super Stardust Portable, Lego Batman and Valkyria Chronicles.
And now we return to the PS3. He announces Life with PlayStation which will allow you to have a news channel and a weather channel and more...just like a certain other gaming system. Jack then welcomes Sony Online Entertainment. And they are about to show us DC Universe Online. But they had some help in presenting it from Jim Lee. He apparently is an avid gamer, anyways they finally get around to showing the game. And it looks alright. I mean, it's still an early build. You can create a hero and fight along the likes of Batman and Superman to take on the Joker and other DC villains. Or, on the flip side, you can create a villain and fight alongside the Joker and take on Batman. The choice is yours next year.
The next announcement kind of pissed me off a bit, because when I got my PS3 there was only the 40 gig model available. But, come September, Sony will be releasing the 80 gig model again for $399.99. Now, the way it sounds is that all the other models (which are only the 40 gig) will be sold and not replenished. So once the 40 gig sells out, there will be only the 80 gig left standing. Damn you Sony. You should have left the 80 gig on the market.
Things are winding down as another PS3 montage is being showed. It's running through games that will be released this year. With the likes of Killzone two, SOCOM Confrontation, Ghostbusters, The Agency, Mirrors Edge, MotorStorm Pacific Rift and Resistance two, among others. Then the moment we all been waiting for., the debut trailer for God of War III. They didn't really show much, obviously. It was a teaser trailer that showed 30 seconds of CGI goodness. We can expect the next chapter in the saga that is Kratos sometime next year. They followed that up with a trailer for inFamous. All I can say about this game is that it looks amazing, and its coming spring of next year. And to wrap the conference up, they saved the best for last. Zipper showed off their next project. It is going to push the PS3 to the limit and no other console can run this game. MAG (which stands for Massive Action Game) will support a whopping 256 players online. Oh, and by the way. By me saying they saved the best for last, I meant who cares? It's a 256 player game. Yeah it sounds neat, but who really wants to play with 255 other people who will probably annoy the piss out of you. Oh, and I know it has a while to go before release, but change the f*cking name. How generic is that name? Come up with something original, Zipper!!
And that's all she wrote for the big two, nothing too big and exciting. Both Nintendo and Sony had a couple cool things, but nothing to pee your pants over. So all-in-all, a rather disappointing outing form all 3. Nothing really made me sit back and say wow. Most of the stuff announced we already rumored. So, that will complete my coverage of the big 3. I hope you found insightful and useful. I will continue to cover all the other conferences as they happen. So stay tuned. We got Ubisoft and Capcom to cover.
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