E3 2011

With E3 finishing for another year,  i want to discuss how well the "big three" did with their conferences and my opinion on who "won" E3.

First off was Microsoft, who were the first out of the three console makers to show their hands. Whilst many expected a Kinect heavy conference, they were disappointed in the over promotion of Kinect and giving core games a back seat. It kicked off with an impressive demos of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and the rebooted Tomb Raider, but the main body of the conference was revealing Kinect titles such as Kinect Sports Season Two, Kinect Disneyland Adventures, Sesame Street:  Once Upon A Monster and the much highly anticipated Kinect Star Wars. There were announcements and demos of Kinect support for Mass Effect 3, Forza 4 and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier which did all look impressive, but it did not help to detract from the view that Microsoft is pushing Kinect to try and eat into Nintendo's stranglehold on the casual gamers market. Whilst the majority of the conference centred around Kinect, Microsoft were able to reveal a couple of core games which included an HD remake of the first Halo, and a teaser trailer for Halo 4, which is being developed by 343 Industries and is described by Don Mattrick as the "Dawn of a new trilogy". As a core gamer myself, i was disappointed in Microsoft's conference, i expected Microsoft to announce quite a bit on Kinect, none of the games would seem to appeal to someone similar to me. Microsoft have seen the success of the Wii and wants a piece of the casual gaming market whilst trying to satisify hardcore gamers. This seems to have failed and as a hardcore gamer and an owner of an Xbox 360, i feel like i was left a bit short changed when seeing what i could look forward to in the next year. Whilst not complete terrible, Microsoft's conference did not impress much.

Next up was Sony, and with the PSN hack scandal which plagued Sony a month before E3, it was appropriate for Jack Tretton; President of Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) to "deal with the elephant in the room" with an apology to gamers and developers all over the world over the Playstation Network outage. Moving away from the PSN scandal, the main headline from Sony's conference was the announcement of the name and prices for the NGP. The official name for the NGP is Playstation Vita. With more than 80 titles already in development, including Street Fighter X Tekken, Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Modnation Racer, it seems that the PS Vita will have some excellent games when it does come out, but whether they can deliver some top titles for release unlike the Nintendo 3DS is another matter. Another announcement which got a big cheer from the crowd was from Irrational Games' Ken Levine, when he announced that there would be a game based in the Bioshock world coming to the PS Vita. As well as the unveiling of the Vita, Sony was heavily investing in the 3D aspect of their console, showing off many of their new titles in 3D, whilst also showing off a Playstation branded 3D monitor which would be affordable for people who don't want to spend thousands to experience 3D. Sony was able to show off many of their titles which impressed, there was hardly any focus on the Playstation Move which as a core gamer impressed me as well as many journalists. But will the good line up of games and the PS Vita help Sony regain the faith which was lost from the PSN outages? Only time will tell.

Last up was Nintendo and the hype leading up to the conference was surrounding the new console which many predicted they would unveil. Many rumours were spiralling around, would it be as powerful as the PS3/Xbox 360? Would it have a tablet-like controller? Is it called the Wii Stream?
 Whilst Nintendo did not reveal the new console straight away, they did kick off with an impressive orchestral performance of various Zelda themes which culminated with Shigeru Miyamoto talking about the Legend of Zelda 25th anniversary this year and the ways they would celebrate it. He announced that Link's Awakening would be in the 3DS Eshop and that the Four Swords would also be available later on in the year. A series of Zelda themed concerts would be taking places across the globe to celebrate the milestone and the anniversary would end with the release of Skyward Sword at the end of the year.
But the big story of the conference was the new home console, Nintendo revealed that it would be called Wii U. Not the most imaginative name, but what was most interesting was the "controller" which came with the consoles. Nintendo chose to focus on the controller and any pictures of the console was hidden away. The new "controller" is a tablet-like device, with the usual Nintendo buttons. But the one outstanding feature that the controller can do is to enable you to carry on your gaming when the TV is unavailable. So if your parents want to use the TV, you can transfer the picture from your TV right onto the screen on your controller and carry on playing. It can also be used as a secondary screen as well, like the Nintendo DS/3DS's bottom screen. Nintendo announced that many publishers were backing the Wii U, with titles including Batman Arkham City coming to the console, but the most impressive game was a HD Zelda tech demo, which showed Link fighting Gohma in a very realistic looking church.


Whilst all the focus was on the Wii U, Nintendo also announced the next batch of 3DS games, which includes Kid Icarus, MGS 3 and future titles including Tekken 3D and Luigi's Mansion 2. After the 3DS's slow start, the big titles are slowly starting to come out. Overall, Nintendo's conference was a success, although some were confused about whether the new console was the actual "controller" shown, as new actual console was shown on screen or live. But apart from the slight confusion, Nintendo were able to steal the show and essentially win E3 with their new hardware and getting its appeal back to core gamers. But is it too late? Has Microsoft and Sony already stolen the hearts of core gamers. The answer will be revealed when sales figures for the Wii U comes out when it is released.

How much influence do reviews have on you???

You go to your favourite website/magazine and check out the review for the game you have been waiting for for months. It gets a 3/10, whilst a game which you have never heard of receives a 9/10. How do you react? Reviews are published weekly on many different forms of media from video games to musicals, but with the ever increasing prices of video games and technology, they are seen by many to be the way to differentiate between ever increasingly similar growing amount of generic shooters, platformers and RPGs, which have made it harder for gamers to tell the gems from the rest.

First of all, i am not criticising a review editor's work, I think that reviewers do a great job to express their  opinions on a certain title, and can sometimes be useful for someone who is in two minds on whether they should spend their hard earned cash on a game. But do they have that much of an influence on you? I believe it depends on your situation. For a game which you have been highly anticipating for a long period of time, reviews will not be the deciding factor on whether you will buy it or not. With many people pre ordering the game and reviews not being able to be printed mostly until the date of release, gamers will not be able to read the reviews until they have the game in their hands. With retailers like HMV, who do not accept refunds, many gamers will mostly go on previews, trailers and gameplay videos to decide whether to invest. Like a reader of the IGN website where he left a very unhappy message on the review for Brink,

" I preordered this because of how positive your previews have been about this game...  I was relying on your hands on opinion which turns out to be hyperbole mixed through with bull****. Nice job."

The review obviously had an effect on the gamer, who pre ordered a game which he believed that it would be worth putting some money down for. Reviews can have that effect, but as an opposite to this case, i put myself up to examine. I like to believe that reviews dont generally have a big say on what games i buy, as i believe that previews and gameplay videos and my own judgement can decide whether a game is worth investing in or not. Being able to read other people's opinions are a help but ultimately i have influence over what i spend my money on. A great example is my purchase of Alan Wake. Although it is not a terrible game, it divided opinion. I personally loved it and was one of the best gaming experiences i had in 2010.