Last year, we offered a fair amount of coverage of E3 despite lacking the resources to attend in person. We provided links and summaries and commentary in one gigantic news post.
This year… Nothing.
Why?
It’s actually quite simple. If you look at our E3 post last year, you’ll notice that we covered mostly the PC related topics and only really looked at the consoles for their next big upgrades or to see games that would have at least a PC port.
This year… the upgrades have names. And that’s about it.
Okay, that isn’t totally fair, but it is a serious issue for me. We now know that project natal will be called “Kinect”. The urge to steal a joke from Atop the Fourth Wall is incredible here, but I’ll resist. We also know it will be bundled with XBox 360 Slim.
That’s right, no next generation consoles were revealed here. Just a “slim” version of the original that can completely destroy your disk if you move the system while it is spinning.
The PS3 Move and Eye thing looks decent. But really, it is still just a Wii rip-off. It should work better, but then again, so should the Wii by now.
So what did Nintendo announce? The 3DS of course. Built in 3D, this is a great idea and I am honestly most likely to pick up one of these some day. But seriously, where’s the new controller or console?
More importantly for me, where’s the PC advancements and announcements?
Well… basically, they’re all in with the consoles. Yes, we can expect a lot of console ports in the coming year.
Don’t get me wrong, Fallout New Vegas looks nice and Portal 2 is good news. But really, we’re looking at ports of Medal of Honor, CoD Black Ops, and other games.
Oh, and a BFBC 2 add-on pack.
…
yea…
…
The simple truth is, I still pine of the days of Duke Nukem 3D and Tomb Raider games. Back in those days, there would be countless photos and news posts. Huge game announcements would be made there. The entire event was one massive spectacle. The consoles had big news. The PC had big news. The hardware had big news. It was all huge.
E3 1997 gave us Half-Life, Unreal, SiN, Quake II, and Metal Gear Solid.
On a side note, can you believe Alan Wake was debuted in 2005?
E3 took a nose dive toward the end of its public run and was restructured as closed door meetings for 2007 and 2008 with around 15,000 in attendance total. Compare that to the 2005 estimate of 70,000.
The key here was that so many “outsiders”… read that as gamers, bloggers, and effectively the entire customer base… had started attending to make reports. The scaled back shows were limited to “industry professionals”.
I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong THAT idea was, but it happened.
In the end, I feel that the 2000’s in general brought a bit of a change to E3’s nature, dragging the presentations into a purely console focus and more or less dumping anything else.
Don’t get me wrong, PC developers and hardware groups may still be there… but when was the last time you saw them given top billing.
“but that just reflects the market,” some of you say. Sure. Consoles are nice because they come equipped for your games. No maintaining an expensive computer system here. And lovely extras like movies and blueray players also help.
My point isn’t that PC is better then everything… that’s a given…
No, I’m simply disappointed that more time and space isn’t given to PC, software companies, hardware, etc.
I can sort of understand the focus on PS3 this year for Portal 2 simply because PS3 had been completely abandoned since the orange box. Knowing people with the PS3, I’m certainly glad VALVe finally gave them the attention they deserved as paying customers… even if it did require MicroSoft demanding money from free DLC to finally change Gabe’s mind.
*sigh* I digress. I’ve gotten very far off topic.
We didn’t cover E3 as heavily this year because I didn’t have the time to sift through all of the news to find the few genuinely good announcements. For what it’s worth, E3 has drastically improved in the past two – once again open to the public… sort of – years.
Even so, I don’t see any reason to report on E3 again until the show improves further, and especially when the developers come up with new consoles and games as opposed to Wii rip-offs, “Slim” products, and a hearty supply of sequels.
Seriously…
When E3 revives its glory days or betters them, we’ll pay more attention. Need I point out that I question whether we would even be able to attend such an expo… even if we did have the needed funding… even in the current “open” format of the show?
What do they consider “credentials” anyway? Driver License? Web Site Receipts? A really big role of one dollar bills?
I’d rather stick with QuakeCon, A-Kon, and other conventions that really focus on the most important people… the customers.
