E3 09: Overall Impressions

Well, E3 ended yesterday although I didn't really pay too much attention to it after the major press conferences ended on Tuesday. After thinking about it for a while I decided that E3 2009 was decent, but nothing mind blowing. Each of the 3 companies had their own strengths and weaknesses which I guess I should elaborate on.

Out of the big 3, I felt that Microsoft was the weakest of the bunch. They didn't have have much to present that wasn't already known or guessed at in some shape or form. More so than any company, Microsoft had the least amount of games to show that were ready for launch during 2008. About 90% of what they had were slated for a 2010 release or later. The games that are coming this year were multi-platform games...so yeah. The thing that pretty much everyone remembers from the conference was Project Natal and to me it doesn't look like it's worth getting extremely excited about. The voice interaction is pure awesome sauce, but the full body motion control aspect only seems to be a little better than the Playstation Eyetoy that was released several years ago and given that what the eyetoy brought to the gaming table wasn't much, I doubt that Natal's implementation in games will be too much to gush over.

Where Microsoft really shined was in the enhancements it was making to the 360's role as an entertainment center. The improvements it's making to the Netflix application is long overdue and should have been there from the start. The facebook addition is pretty cool even though i don't have a facebook (been thinking about it though). And what project natal is going to do the interface of the system is pretty sweet as well.

Nintendo had a lot to make up for after last year's embarrassing showing and they did step it up a little by showing that they had actual games coming out this year (although even if they had only one real game to show, it would be an improvement). The problem is, even more than Microsoft, Nintendo didn't have much to show that we didn't already know about in some way. We already knew that a 2nd New Super Mario Bros was coming, we just didn't know it was going to be mulitplayer and for the Wii. We already knew about another major 3d Mario game coming as well. Only Golden Sun Ds and Metorid: Other M were genuine unknown surprise announcements. Nintendo also spent too much time on junk they've shown before like The Wii Motion Plus and Wii Sports Resort.

Also since they've started the whole casual game trend, Nintendo doesn't really know how to do an interesting conference. Seriously, Nintendo's conference felt like a PTA meeting. Nintendo still needs to understand that the casual market their shooting for doesn't watch or care about E3. Nintendo's showings were better than Microsoft's largely because they had decent mix of games that are actually coming this year and games to look forward to in the future. The fact that there are 3 Mario games of actual substance on display (2 platformers and an RPG) is pretty damn impressive and the fact that 2 of them make heavy use of my favorite game character Yoshi is just amazing. Mario may be my favorite game franchise, but I really wish they would have focused a little more on some of their other franchises (The long-awaited Wii Zelda title was revealed to be in development during a roundtable and will released next year at the earliest). Overall Nintendo did pretty well, even though they clearly did the bare minimum to make up for their past failings....just don't get me started on that completely retarded Wii Vitality Sensor...

Sony has never really impressed me with their press conferences. Their E3 presentations aren't bad, their just not that memorable. As such I don't really have too much to comment on with Sony as I did with the other 2. This year was a tad better than their usual showings but not by much so it kinda sad that I feel that Sony had the best presence at E3 this year. Sony had a better balance of stats and games and they revealed the most new games coming out with many interesting features. I felt that Sony's conference had the best structure as well: focusing on the one console at a time as opposed to Nintendo who jumped back and forth between their 2 systems. Although Sony failed to convince me to buy a Psp, I was gald to see them make an admirable attempt to make it appear like a worthwhile handheld (I'm sure it is) and I'm sure that those who own one are thrilled to see some actual games released for the system. If I did get a Psp, I would definitely buy MGS: Peace Walker (In related news since the press conferences, it was announced that the 360 game MGS: Rising is indeed coming to the PS3)

After a few years, the PS3 has finally got a decent number of games and this year's showings have finally convinced me to pick up the system when I have the cash, although Sony's really gonna need to do a price drop first. God of War 3 may not be very different from it predecessors, but at least it's clear that the game is gonna be just as good as what's come before. Like I said in my Sony impressions posts, there was a distinct lack of Ratchet & Clank that really bugged me but I think in the end Sony may have made the right choice focusing on GOW instead since it is higher profile and R&C (much like GOW) hasn't really changed much over the years to really talk about. As for Sony's motion control, if Sony can release some decent software for it, I'm sure it could possibly outdue the Wii Remote...and as I said before at least this thing's implementation in games is more realistic than Project Natal.

So in summation, E3 2009 was okay. Microsoft was the worst to me as they only had about a handful interesting things and most of it won't be out for quite a while, but I won't deny that some of those games mentioned should be pretty good. Nintendo gave their their fans much more interesting stuff unlike last year and Sony just did their thing and came out one top.

Score below is as follows.
CONFERENCE PLACING:
1st: Sony
2nd: Nintendo
3rd: Microsoft