While gamer denizens of the internet are currently debating if Sony or Nintendo had the better press conference today, (Sony had Twisted Metal, Nintendo had Kid Icarus; Nintendo had an 800lb primate and Sony had Gabe Newell.) most seem to have agreed that Microsoft’s event all things considered was not up to the usual blitz the company behind the 360 usually has.
I mean granted it is hard to top one half of The Beatles, Steven Spielberg and the bottom of an Avatar’s shoe but this year was light on everything that wasn’t on-stage Kinect demonstrations.
The odd thing about Microsoft’s conference was that while they got their biggest hardcore guns out first with Call of Duty: Black Ops, Gears 3 and Halo Reach so that the rest of the time could be spent on their bigger focus, both Nintendo and Sony seemed to do that as well to a smaller extent and managed to come out okay.
What I mean in this case is that Nintendo got the new Zelda demo out of the way (the thing, the ONLY thing really that most gaming journalists talked about at all when talking about what they were looking forward to from Nintendo in the weeks leading up to this E3) so that the rest of the conference could be spent not only on what you didn’t come to see, but to not get anxious and write “Yeah yeah this is cool but WHERE’S ZELDA?!?!” on your twitter feed during the announcements of a new Kirby and Donkey Kong Country game and then feel let down once it turned out Zelda was the same game it’s always been.
Sony did something similar with Killzone 3 (even though I was wondering throughout their presser where The Last Guardian was at and that never really came up at all during the event, guess they’re saving that for TGS this fall) and spent dividing the rest of their conference into designated chunks. Like, this chunk is about 3D, this chunk is about Move, this chunk is about how much we love EA oh please EA we love you MAKE LOVE TO ME EA GIVE ME EXCLUSIVE CONTENT.
Microsoft though once it started on showing off Kinect games, never really got much interest back from most of the audience from looking at the reactions. More than that, when people talk about Kinect now it seems they talk more about the spectacle surrounding Kinect than the games themselves. Nobody’s talking about Kinect Sports but everyone is still talking about the seperate Kinect events that required what the internet now refers to as “Space Ponchos” to wear as Cirque du Soleil took control of most of the event.
The Kinect event seemed similar to earlier Microsoft events like the first 360 unveiling on MTV back in 2005 where more hype was made about the 360 as a brand rather than a machine that played cool games. More time was spent in that special on J Allard talking about how important it was that the 360 looked like an anorexic model inhailing than how Rare’s games were coming along.
Speaking of Rare’s games, the fact that many watching the conference were doing so if only to see what Rare was going to show off in relation to it’s game making prowess after not really making any games since 2008′s Nuts and Bolts, only to find out that all Rare was showing off was Kinect Sports, was a bit of a downer as well.
Sony generally seemed excited about the games they were showing off and using Move to springboard the games onto the audience. Microsoft on the other hand seemed to want people to understand KINECT like it was a revolutionary concept. And unlike last E3 where most of the audience was on board with that line of thinking, it seems that this year many aren’t interested in embracing Kinect and “donning the space poncho” as the term would seem to be. – The Ben
