Hosted By Brian Perry,  David MacDonald, and Mike Thivierge

With E3 in full force and the major press conferences having come to a close the gang gets together and takes a hard look at what was really said in each conference and discuss all the games that were detailed.

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By David MacDonald

Opening up with a full orchestra to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Legend of Zelda over a montage of all the Zelda games over the past 25 years. A bit of new footage from Zelda: Skyward Sword.

Miyamoto pops out and speaks on the music of Zelda, then starts riffing with the orchestra. Does the getting an item sound with the orchestra while he acts it out. I truly hope he reveals something big doing this, otherwise its just wasted time… Turns out, he’s just wasting time. (more…)

By Brian Perry

The Sony e3 presentation has come to an end and it’s time for another “Not Quite Live Blog”.
(more…)

By David MacDonald

In 2012, EA is highlighting “Game Changers”, a system of using connectivity among different platforms and social media to further enhance your playing experience. While not really occurring on all their featured titles this year, EA still has an impressive lineup for the coming year.

(more…)

By Brian Perry

Ubisoft’s E3 keynote has come and gone for 2011 bringing us some interesting surprises and a whole lot of awkward silences. Instead of lambasting the presenters however, here is the not so live blog for Ubisofts presentation. (more…)

Via Next-Gen comes the reports that the video game industry is still seeing drops for this year’s first fiscal quarter on all fronts.

On one front you have Sony’s PlayStation Division actually improving their situation from previous years with smaller losses than before thanks to the PS3 hardware selling more and being cheaper to produce now.

Capcom managed to post a profit for Q1, but income came at a massive dive of 90.4% due to the massive underperformances of Lost Planet 2 and Monster Hunter Tri. If I remember correctly Capcom had expected Lost Planet 2 to sell in the millions in the long run which doesn’t look like it’ll be happening now.

Lastly Nintendo who had Wii hardware sales actually increase 3 million in one quarter compared to last year’s 2 million posted a rare quarterly loss of $288 million for Q1. They had a positive operating, but the slowing sales of a system in it’s sixth year on the market, smaller software sales on both platforms and the gamble they took with a hedge fund that they lost due to the exchange rates not being favorable to them hurt them.

Luckily, this drop may in fact push them to release the 3DS by the end of this year instead of “Around March 2011″ now. It took more than half a decade, but seeing that the handheld is now at 132 million units sold and DS HW are slowing down yes, finally everyone now does have a DS. – The Ben

Via Neo Gaf the NPD numbers for this past June are finally in:

PlayStation 3 304.8K
PSP 121.0K
Xbox 360 451.7K
Wii 422.5K
Nintendo DS 510.7K

Top 10 VG Console/Portable SKU’s June 2010
Title Platform Publisher Release Date Units
RED DEAD REDEMPTION 360 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE May-10 582.9K
SUPER MARIO GALAXY 2 WII NINTENDO May-10 548.4K
RED DEAD REDEMPTION PS3 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE May-10 380.3K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO Nov-09 200.9K
JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09 174.8K
WII FIT PLUS W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO Oct-09
TOY STORY 3 NDS DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS Jun-10
UFC 2010: UNDISPUTED 360 THQ May-10
LEGO HARRY POTTER: YEARS 1-4 WII WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE Jun-10
UFC 2010: UNDISPUTED PS3 THQ May-10

The thread the numbers were posted in from the above link was originally about Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg’s afternoon tweet in which he let this little sales tidbit out:

@aarongreenberg
Look out hare, here comes the tortoise…post E3 bump & new console drives Xbox 360 sales up 88% as top selling console in June

It sure was the top selling console for June, although from the way he was describing things you’d think the 360 would be more than just slightly ahead thanks to the 360 Slim but everybody seems to have had a good month.

Except the PSP, hell even the PS3 had a pretty outstanding June all things considered. The NPD doesn’t count PS2 sales anymore remember so that’s probably comforting to Sony. Comforting because can you imagine how things would look if the PS2 outsold the PSP at this point?

Like last month it’s not that there’s no new games for the PSP because hell, there are new games for it! And that just brings up an even more depressing fact looking at the sales numbers again; Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker didn’t even manage to crack the top ten. It didn’t even sell more than 150,000 from the looks of things going by the software numbers. Now that’s a damn shame. – The Ben

Via the Wall Street Journal comes a juicy tidbit of info that Sony may be working on a handheld device meant to not only combat Nintendo in the portable gaming market but every mobile device you currently carry around in your pocket as well.

One particular part of the WSJ article seems to boil the situation down nicely:

Meanwhile, Sony is developing a portable device that shares characteristics of hand-held game machines, e-book readers and netbook computers, according to people familiar with the matter. Some Sony e-book readers already come with 3G connections but it isn’t clear if a new wireless gadget will use carrier networks.

So if this is to be believed, Sony is tired of not being the champion in the portable game space as it envisioned itself to be by this time back in 2005 and now is setting their sights on taking on another portable market already in a heated battle. At least they aren’t trying to go all the way and make it a phone as well. Just declaring war in all markets to have their bases covered now that’d be crazy – The Ben

Via GAF we finally have the NPD numbers for this past May:

PlayStation 3 154.5K
PSP 59.4K
Xbox 360 194.6K
Wii 334.8K
Nintendo DS 383.7K

RED DEAD REDEMPTION 360 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE May-10 945.9K 1
RED DEAD REDEMPTION PS3 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE May-10 567.1K 2
SUPER MARIO GALAXY 2 WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA May-10 563.9K 3
UFC 2010: UNDISPUTED 360 THQ May-10 221.1K 4
UFC 2010: UNDISPUTED PS3 THQ May-10 192.3K 5
WII FIT PLUS W/BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09 6
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 7
ALAN WAKE * 360 MICROSOFT May-10 8
POKEMON SOULSILVER VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 9
SKATE 3 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS May-10 10

Now as these are the new and improved NPD reports take note that we only get the exact numbers for the top five games for the month instead of the usual Top Ten/Twenty figures.

Also note that when a game is launched on more than one platform and both SKUs make it into the top they each count as a seperate figure to report on so in truth we only really get numbers for the top three titles this month. Meaning that we don’t know exactly how much Alan Wake ended up selling in the first month of sales, only that it was below two hundred-thousand units. But at least it made the Top 10!

Hardware sales are same as they always are with Wii/DS looking a bit healthier than before while 360/PS3 sell at their usual paces and PSP…

Well at least PSP has Marcus. – The Ben

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

The big story of the day it would seem would be previous Playstation Exclusive Developer Insomniac’s announcement of partnering with EA as their new IPs will no longer be exclusive to Sony platforms.

According to Kotaku, Insomniac Games will have the rights to whatever IP they develop under this new venture, as well as the reassurance to current PS3 owners that the “Ratchet and Clank” and “Resistance” will still continue to be developed by the studio for the time being.

The biggest thing I get out of this is what that one analyst has been talking about for a while about how many second-party developers will most likely be drifting towards multi-platform. First Bungie signing on with Activision and now Insomniac Games with EA, he may actually be onto something about this subject.

Of course while some second-party developers may start moving onto multi-platform development that doesn’t mean all of them are going to do the same now.

On another note still keeping in theme with the whole second-parties become independent studios for hire deal; it’s too bad that Rare wanted to be bought and owned rather than become a freelance developer like Bungie and Insomniac seem to be doing. I know they’re fine financially with Microsoft as their eternal sugar daddy, but many don’t seem to hold them with the same respect they used to garner in the last decade.

Meanwhile while Insomniac was acclaimed last generation with a constant stream of R&C games on the PS2, PS3 exclusivity and their new next IP’s have had trouble connecting with the mass market so far. Being open to any platform may help them out now in that regard. – The Ben

Via NeoGaf it’s once again time for the NPD numbers, this time for the month of April.

PlayStation 3 180.8K
PSP 65.5K
Xbox 360 185.4K
Wii 277.2K
Nintendo DS 440.8K

1. TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION* 360 UBISOFT Apr-10 486.1K
2. POKEMON SOULSILVER VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 242.9K
3. NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 200.3K
4. POKEMON HEARTGOLD VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 192.6K
5. GOD OF WAR III* PS3 SONY Mar-10 180.3K
6. WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09
7. BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-10 166K
8. WII FIT PLUS W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09
9. JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09
10. SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV PS3 CAPCOM USA Apr-10 143K

*. SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV 360 CAPCOM USA Apr-10 108K

Wow, those are some low numbers all around.

Also starting this month NPD is only giving out the exact numbers for the top five games instead of all ten, meaning gamers who really want to know how well a game at number 8 or 10 on the chart will have to beg people in the know for numbers at 6 and beyond; which is how the numbers for Street Fighter IV and Bad Company 2 came to light. Thanks to Microsoft for those tidbits.

The PS2 also is not being reported by the NPD anymore as well, though they’re still tracking it’s sales. If Sony wanted they could let gamers know every month how well the thing’s still doing. However the fact that the PS2 may very well have outsold the PSP this month in it’s ninth year on the U.S. market may not be something they’re that desperate to proclaim in their Press Release.

Those low PSP hardware numbers give the rumblings of a PSP2 being announced at Sony’s E3 presser next more strength, at least to me.

I just hope the PSP2 will have the ability to read UMDs, even if the games made for the device won’t come on them. The saddest part about the PSP situation is that there are actually some pretty high profile games coming out for the thing here in the U.S. this year. Peace Walker, that Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep game, heck even Ready at Dawn Studios is giving the system another gem with a second portable God of War title. There’s still life in the system, but what good is that if nobody is playing the last few hits for the thing? – The Ben

The dog and pony show that is E3 seems to back to it’s old self as the press releases and conference dates for companies are coming out of the woodwork.

As if to make up for the past few years Microsoft has already gone ahead and made plans for not one but two seperate pre-E3 conferences. One will be the usual standard fare of showing off new hardcore games and most likely have Bill Gates appear near the end to hype up something but more interestingly this year is their Natal specific conference.

Excuse me, Natal EXPERIENCE. And just like the now five year old Xbox 360 special MTV did half a decade ago, the two are teaming up again to show off Natal to the world. Exclusively.

According to this Yahoo! Finance news tidbit they’ve gotten a heads up from Microsoft about how MTV Networks will be exclusively broadcasting every spectacle that Microsoft shows off at their briefings.

Via Geoff Keighley’s Twitter he states that “The Xbox E3 Media Briefing has a new home: It will air exclusively on Spike TV. Live to both coasts, HD, and commercial free.”

This is pretty interesting as the last few years gamers interested in watching most company’s E3 Briefings would have a nice selection of venues to choose from. You could simply just find a good stream from both the large and small game news outlets or you could even watch them live from your couch via G4. But, at least for the Xbox Media Briefing you’ll have to catch it on either GameTrailers.Com or Spike Tv.

The one thing I’m not fully sure about here is if any old blog with a webcam will still be able to stream or if this deal means that only his grace Lord Geoff of Keighley and his Spike TV Kingdom have control over all outgoing media while the briefings are going on. He says on his Twitter page “Correct the press conference won’t air on G4. It will also be online on GameTrailers” so I know they have full TV rights, but if GameTrailers is really going to be the only place to get a decent feed of the conference (and it’s not going to be decent if it’s the only feed available online) then this is something new to me. Exclusive press conference rights.

On a similar note Leo Laporte’s just mentioned today that, “We want to do live coverage of E3. We’ve got Brian Brushwood flying out. We’ve got a sponsor. But E3 says no – G4 has an exclusive. What what?”

I don’t know if E3 means floor coverage or what but I’m just as confused as Leo is at the moment.

Oh and one more thing going back to Microsoft’s Natal Experience. One thing they made sure to mention in their invitations to the event is that Cirque Du Soleil will be performing at the EXPERIENCE event. That’s going to be…very interesting at least. – The Ben

Via, oh let’s go with EDGE today since it kept things short and sweet without any fluff about about how “DA SONY MOVE’S GONNA EAT THEIR LUNCH” like most mainstream news outlets today have written about this news.

But anyway yeah via Edge today Nintendo announced that it’s annual profits for the financial year ending March 31, 2010 were down 18% from last year, with sales down 22 percent to $15.3 billion, operating income down 36% at $3.8 billion, and net profit down 18% coming to a total $2 billion dollars left to add to the war chest.

Nintendo expects Wii sales (now at 70 million sold worldwide) to fall to 18 million units sold in the coming year as opposed to the 20 million sold last year and 30 million DS sales (now at 128 million units sold when you combine the entire DS family) as opposed to 27 million DS units last year.

The increase in DS sales is most likely including the 3DS into the equation. Anyway a few final notes taken from Nintendo’s own PDF of the Report; Wii Sports Resort sold 16 million units, NSMBW sold 14 million units last year and Wii Fit Plus managed around 12 million units. – The Ben

Via the LA Times Blog comes the story of the day that in addition to the previous lawsuit Activision faces with the former Infinity Ward heads West and Zampella a new lawsuit was filed against the company today by 38 IW employees according to the article.

Of the 38 employees involved in the suit the story says that 21 are former employees of Infinity Ward and that the remaining 17 are current IW employees.

Activision responded to the suit the story updated later in the day with this:

“Activision believes the action is without merit,” a company spokesman said in response to the suit. “Activision retains the discretion to determine the amount and the schedule of bonus payments for [Modern Warfare 2] and has acted consistent with its rights and the law at all times. We look forward to getting judicial confirmation that our position is right.”

What a bizarre saga this is becoming. The turmoil has gotten to the point where nobody knows at this point exactly what’s going to remain of Infinity Ward as a brand after all this settles. – The Ben

Via NeoGaf comes a link to Microsoft’s Q3 2009-2010 results for the past fiscal year.

Of note is the tidbit of info that the 360 has finally passed the 40 million mark in terms of sold consoles. It’s hard to believe that the 360 will be nearing it’s fifth birthday this fall but there it is. Going by previous generations the 360′s passed not only it’s older sibling but legacy systems like the Genesis and the N64.

If this were any previous generation we’d be well into that time when the rumblings of what the “NEXT-GEN” will bring and every magazine and site’s E3 predictions would go wild as speculation over dubious news goes on for months until the show itself hits. But this generation of console gaming has changed the rules in more ways than one and this matter is no different. While different SKU’s and internal chips are announced and revisions to consoles will keep coming, the next-gen is nothing but a dream for most of the industry at this point it seems. – The Ben

Once again thanks to NeoGaf the lates batch of NPD numbers for last month are here for all to gaze upon:

PlayStation 2 118.3K
PlayStation 3 313.9K
PSP 119.9K
Xbox 360 338.4K
Wii 557.5K
Nintendo DS 700.8K

GOD OF WAR III* PS3 SONY Mar-10 1.10M
POKEMON SOULSILVER VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 1.02M
FINAL FANTASY XIII PS3 SQUARE ENIX Mar-10 828.2K
BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-10 825.5K
POKEMON HEARTGOLD VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 761.2K
FINAL FANTASY XIII 360 SQUARE ENIX Mar-10 493.9K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 457.4K
BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 PS3 ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-10 451.2K
WII FIT PLUS W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09 429.6K
MLB 10: THE SHOW PS3 SONY Mar-10 349.2K

DS and Wii back on top after a shortage last month while the 360 stays ahead of the PS3 even with God of War 3 taking the Top Spot in software sales. Also of note is the fact that the 360 version of FF XIII didn’t quite reach the same level of sales as the PS3 one did, and that the Soul Silver version of the latest Pokemon game performed better than the Hear Gold version.

Oh and the PSP just barely outsold the PS2 for the month. There’s nothing more really you can say about that situation. But hey perhaps Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will give the system one more big push in sales before the PSP 2 shows up sometime in the near future? – The Ben

Via IGN comes the news that the first map pack for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was downloaded over one million times in the first twenty-four hours of it’s release and would go on to sell over 2.5 million copies over the course of the week.

The map pack was priced at $15 dollars and only available on Xbox Live in comparison to the first World at War map pack that was available on both the PS3 and 360 last year which sold 1 million digital copies in the first week as well at $10 dollars according to IGN.

Everyone seems to have mixed feelings about this news. While it’s good that gamers are enjoying themselves with new content for a game that’s almost half a year old (showing that a franchise like Call of Duty is immune to that “DLC must happen in the first six weeks of a game’s launch or else the public won’t bite” rule) the fact that Infinity Ward’s achievements are currently still in the public eye for all the wrong reasons makes this victory bittersweet for some. – The Ben

We’re not simply talking about a DS redesign either. Via a press release straight from Nintendo:

March 23, 2010

To Whom It May Concern:
Re: Launch of New Portable Game Machine

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (Minami-ward of Kyoto-city, President Satoru Iwata) will launch “Nintendo 3DS”(temp) during the fiscal year ending March 2011, on which games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.

“Nintendo 3DS”(temp) is going to be the new portable game machine to succeed “Nintendo DS series”, whose cumulative consolidated sales from Nintendo amounted to 125million units as of the end of December 2009, and will include backward compatibility so that the software for Nintendo DS series, including the ones for Nintendo DSi, can also be enjoyed.

We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles in the U.S.

I got nothing. – The Ben

Via Gamasutra, Michael Pachter today described a new strategy after an invester visit with EA concerning the company’s focus on releasing PDLC (premium downloadable content) before the game is actually released.

According to Pachter the General Manager of Visceral Games stated the PLDC would be “essentially a very long demo, along the lines of 2009′s Battlefield 1943″ and that “A full-blown packaged game would follow shortly after the release of the PDLC, bearing a full retail price. Mr. Earl believes that the release of the PDLC first limits the risk of completing and marketing the full packaged version, and serves as a low-cost marketing tool.”

The article goes on to say that Pachter later told them that, “I think that the plan is to release PDLC at $15 that has 3-4 hours of gameplay, so [it has] a very high perceived value, then [EA will] take the feedback from the community (press and players) to tweak the follow-on full game that will be released at a normal packaged price point.” also adding that he believes Battlefield 1943 would have been a bigger success had they released a full-blown version of the game a few months after release.

Interestingly, the article ends with these investor specific nuggets of info from Pachter:

“We’ve been wrong about this stock for almost five years. Either we’re stupid, stubborn, or unlucky, but we’ve been wrong. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, each time hoping for a different result,” Pachter wrote.

“This time, while we are again hoping for a different result, we see evidence that the company is not doing the same things over and over again: lower headcount, fewer facilities, fewer games, a greater use of outsourcing, innovative combinations of digital and packaged goods content, a better greenlight process and a growing digital business,” the analyst said. “This time, we think that EA is on the right path.”

He’s been wrong on EA for almost five years now but he’s got a good feeling this time around! – The Ben