E3 09 : Objective accomplished for the Big 3
By demonbear 7 Comments
Even though the time for the " who won E3 " threads seems over now, I feel like I should post what I think about it.
Since sony's conference, I started to reflect on what was shown to us by the Big 3 and you know what?
I think there's no clear winner. I think that each company came this year with their own objectives and each of them did exactly what I thought they should.
Let's check them in order.
Microsoft
What they needed to do this year : Last year was pretty good, plus they had that FF13 sucker punch announcement which was great for them. I thought that this year, they needed to announce their plan to tap into the casual market, put up a wall of exclusive titles, announce a few surprises here and there and keep on adding stuff to the Xbox interface, which they did at every E3.
What we got : That's precicely what happened. They presented their Natal project and shows what's their angle on the casual market, We got a pretty impressive list of titles with a few good surprises L4D2 and Crackdown 2 for example, and last.fm + facebook + twitter are nice additions, I might not use them, but its free and its there.
Nintendo
What they needed to do this year : Lets be honest, last year was a goddamn train wreck. I don't play on Nintendo consoles anymore but I came out of last year's conference basically insulted. Nintendo wanted to seel their stuff to my mom and my grandma, Wth? This year, I felt Nintendo needed to address this situation by doing 2 major things : Make sure they have games for all 3 major franchises ( Mario, Zelda, Metroid ) announced and get some grittier games shown to, at least, pretend they care about hardcore gamers while still continuing on pushing the casual market further.
What we got : Mission accomplished. We got Mario games, Zelda Games, a neat Metroid announcement. Resident Evil, Conduit and whatnot. And Nintendo can keep going selling Wii fit and the like. My girlfriend is quite excited, i guess its a good sign.
Sony
What they needed to do this year : Last year, Sony had a pretty good conference too but we were left with mostly promises. I felt this year, they needed to bring on the heat, get the PSP back on track with a clear direction, sign some goddamn exclusives and get a plan to tap in the casual market as well.
What we got : Again, dead on the money! Sony showed an awesome lineup of games including surprising exclusives, a new psp with a whole bunch of psp games to go with it. The "wiimote" they showed looked interesting and there's potential there. Also there's one big news that flew under most people's radar : They will drop the price of PSP devkits by 80%. That may not mean much to you, but this means Sony is effin' serious about getting developpers back on the psp. Great news for everyone.
so as you can see, from my perspective, I don't feel anyone dropped the ball. They all had clear objectives and I feel that the clear winner here, its us! 2010 is gonna be a great year to be a gamer, whatever the console(s) you own.