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    The 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California on June 5-7.

    Feel the electricity - E3 2012

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    Tomorrowman

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    Edited By Tomorrowman

    A debate starts every June. Is the Electronics Entertainment Expo - E3 - Too much pomp and not enough substance?

    For time in memoreum the video game industry has been trying to present itself as something more than a violence market, and for the most part we've gotten there thanks to the success of the Wii breaking into the mainstream. People working in the industry bemoan that E3 is a pimple on the newly accepted backside of the gaming culture.

    On the outside it does little to garner much interest. No soccer mom, no matter how many B.O.B cd's she buys to fit in, will have it in her vocabulary to say to her child, 'I saw that dope new Call of Duty, child. Can't wait to get my prestige on!'

    So if E3 isn't for the people who actually make the games or to attract the people who are only casually interested.....then why bother? What purpose does this breast filled, swag swollen, dubstep laden mess really serve at the end of the day?

    They do it for me, you see.

    Forget what you've heard about Arbor day, E3 is truly the most glorious time of the year. Sure, Comicon may be more restrained and well organized mixed with some dry humping. DragonCon may tackle a wider swath of nerd natures and certainly contains its fair share of bondage. But E3, yes, E3 is a 'get to the point and drop your pants' orgasm of gaming bliss. Every 5 seconds some developer somewhere is shoving something so pretty and shiny in your face that even Ben Stine would have ADD. Oh, you thought that new handheld you just saw was cool? Well ours has glasses free 3D AND CAN RAISE THE DEAD!

    The penis metaphors continue unabated as billion dollar company and indie darling alike compete to show your just how big theirs is. Game developers of legend are dressed up and paraded out on stage to whore out some new kinect piece of shit you don't give a damn about and I still cheer anyway and I'll probably rush to preorder whatever it was. Three days later you wake up in your underwear walking bowlegged and loving it.

    E3 is disgusting, dirty, and essential.

    Microsoft

    While I'm definitely no fanboy, the Xbox is my gaming platform of choice. It just works, unlike the ps3 that updates every 5 minutes and I don't have to buy a new video card every week like the PC. Most of my attention during the press conferences is paid right here.

    That's why the past few E3's I've been a little let down as Microsoft has chosen to focus almost solely on the Kinect. Now, it's just fine for dancing and working out, but people only really want one dance game and one workout game. What they end up doing is cramming more advanced games into the Kinect and praying to God that the tech doesn't break on stage while they are doing it. Or worse, they film people ahead of time using the Kinect so people in the audience are left to guess at how broken the final product really will be.

    I've been caught up in the magic before. Microsoft is damn good at parading some hella cute little kids out on the stage and making them pet adorable virtual bears. When I saw that little girl debut the Kinect by playing with her 'tiger', I thought I was watching the future right there. A year later when I played the same game in my store I fussed with the set up for 2 hours before the Kinect finally gave up and so did I.

    Last year was all about making the kinect appeal to the core gaming audience. Projects like Fable Journey were shown and people the game was aimed at kept asking the same question, "Why would I want to play a watered down, broken ass motion game when I can just pick up my controller and play something that is actually half decent." Microsoft failed hard'core' (get it?) with their gambit last year, and I think they have learned their lesson.

    This year I expect them to fully embrace the two different gaming camps of 'casual' and 'core' and understand that there doesn't HAVE to be overlap there to be successful. They don't have to try and get me to play a game with my grandmother to get me to give them my money. The key thing that brings us together is the Xbox itself. My fiance uses the xbox as much as I do, but not for games. Netflix and Zune are the things that bring the casual and core together and my household is the perfect example of that.

    We will see two waves at this year's conference. A new Gears of War has already been announced, and (omg omg omg omg) Alan Wake 2 has been teased very recently. Halo 4 of course is on the docket along with plenty of surprises I'm sure. Then we will see the long line of fake families brought out to dance in front of a fake kinect to show you that gaming isn't all about murder.

    I think the main focus, though, is going to be on what takes place outside of the game. The Xbox Live Gold structure is in need of some major renovation as it's offered the same package for over 6 years. With the recent changes to Playstation Plus, Xbox no longer offers the most media options for the money. For a subscription to Playstation Plus you get free games and movies, along with added speed and connivance. On Xbox Gold, you get to play your games online....that's it. There's no rewards besides the console doing what it should do anyway. Give me a free arcade game, give me higher quality Netflix streaming, make it worth it for me to give you my money instead of to Playstation.

    All in all, Microsoft's conference is guaranteed to be the most boring. Lots of sequels to series that have gotten way to long in the tooth. Gears of War just ended, do I REALLY need a prequel?

    Oh, the Xbox interface is getting ANOTHER tweak, great.

    I don't expect any jaw dropping moments here. This is the filler year until the next gen system drops next Christmas. And I guarantee that next system is going to blow everyone away.

    Sony

    Sony I'm most interested to see as they have the most to prove. Financially they couldn't be in a deeper pit. The Playstation Vita was, by any definition, a failure and the company has delayed so many of it's high profile titles that gamers don't have much faith games like Last Guardian will ever see the light of day. Put simply, if they don't pull a rabbit out of their ass this year Sony will no longer be a threat in the US. (Sony dominates in Europe)

    Microsoft is a ham sandwich, nothing fancy but the job gets done. Sony is a lobster dinner, you have to wait forever and pay out the nose but it's worth it. Recently the service has gotten lax and the waiters are spitting in the food, but what would it take to get back in the good graces? Forgive me for saying this, but be less Japanese.

    American and Japanese sensibilities when it comes to technology are opposed. Games Sony makes don't have a development deadline, instead they are given to game design 'royalty' and then given free reign out of a culture of respect. Now that is all great and lovely, but when it has taken Team Ico 7 years and we still haven't seen gameplay of The Last Guardian, something isn't working right. Naughty Dog has release the entire Uncharted trilogy in that time and it was phenomenal. Sony has to hold their teams to some actual standards, because when a ps3 exclusive does finally make it to shelves it usually changes the industry. Uncharted forever altered how third person shooters are paced. Heavy Rain rebuilt the adventure game. The Last Of Us is looking to be one of the biggest paradigm shifts in game design in the last decade. With such great things to say about Sony it's so sad to see that they are bleeding out in front of us.

    If Sony trots out the stillborn that is the Move I'll be greatly surprised. It elicits only chuckles every time it appears and I don't even want to talk about it to be honest.

    The key to Sony's success is going to be embracing what they used to be - innovators and gourmets. The Playstation is a collection of games as art, but they are constantly trying to sit with the cheerleaders and its ostracizing them. I don't think this year will be any different. It's going to be hard to watch, but Sony will continue to be boring instead of enlightening. If they had any clue how to not loose millions, they would have done it by now.

    Nintendo

    Last year Nintendo announced the Wii U and everyone shrugged. They did a terrible job of showing that the Wii U was an actual brand new console. Instead, it looked like a tablet controller add on for you existing system. Many of the 'casual' groups shown the Wii U didn't show any interest as their Wii was already hidden under a mound of dust bunnies. Their main goal is going to be to really strengthen the Wii U as something new and amazing. They've lost the core crowd and show no interest in getting them back, and they are okay with that.

    The Wii U is going to be marketed as a must have accessory for your living room. The spin will be that Wii U isn't for games, Wii U is to enhance your life. It's a very Japanese sensibility, but unlike Sony's drabness, Nintendo succeeds because they offer Americans cleanliness and simplicity. The reason the Wii U box wasn't shown last year was to emphasize that this isn't about the technology but how it makes your life more clutter free.

    I'm at a loss to what they'll be showing. Will it be the Wii U as a media box? An Ipad like hub for your home full of weather and the youtubes?

    Will it be a top of the line gaming machine for the core? (No)

    Will it be the next leap for the casual gamer? Does the casual gamer even want a next leap?

    This year we're going to find out if Nintendo has made a mistake or not. The Wii U is a terrible and terribly confusing name, and no one actually wants one. Can Nintendo show us just what this thing is and who it's for? I'm excited to find out.

    ______________________________

    I'll be writing about all the other conferences after they happen. I could make some predictions like Beyond Good and Evil 2 or that Assassin's Creed III is going to be the most talked about game of the show, but it's the surprises that make E3 worth being a part of.

    This E3 more than ever will be about the divide in our culture now that my Mom playing farmville is finally considered as much as a gamer as I am with my 80 hours in Diablo III. I'm happy about that, no culture should ever exclude other groups - that's how you end up with North Carolina. Let's just see if the industry can handle the two different extremes without falling apart.

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    Tomorrowman

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    #1  Edited By Tomorrowman

    A debate starts every June. Is the Electronics Entertainment Expo - E3 - Too much pomp and not enough substance?

    For time in memoreum the video game industry has been trying to present itself as something more than a violence market, and for the most part we've gotten there thanks to the success of the Wii breaking into the mainstream. People working in the industry bemoan that E3 is a pimple on the newly accepted backside of the gaming culture.

    On the outside it does little to garner much interest. No soccer mom, no matter how many B.O.B cd's she buys to fit in, will have it in her vocabulary to say to her child, 'I saw that dope new Call of Duty, child. Can't wait to get my prestige on!'

    So if E3 isn't for the people who actually make the games or to attract the people who are only casually interested.....then why bother? What purpose does this breast filled, swag swollen, dubstep laden mess really serve at the end of the day?

    They do it for me, you see.

    Forget what you've heard about Arbor day, E3 is truly the most glorious time of the year. Sure, Comicon may be more restrained and well organized mixed with some dry humping. DragonCon may tackle a wider swath of nerd natures and certainly contains its fair share of bondage. But E3, yes, E3 is a 'get to the point and drop your pants' orgasm of gaming bliss. Every 5 seconds some developer somewhere is shoving something so pretty and shiny in your face that even Ben Stine would have ADD. Oh, you thought that new handheld you just saw was cool? Well ours has glasses free 3D AND CAN RAISE THE DEAD!

    The penis metaphors continue unabated as billion dollar company and indie darling alike compete to show your just how big theirs is. Game developers of legend are dressed up and paraded out on stage to whore out some new kinect piece of shit you don't give a damn about and I still cheer anyway and I'll probably rush to preorder whatever it was. Three days later you wake up in your underwear walking bowlegged and loving it.

    E3 is disgusting, dirty, and essential.

    Microsoft

    While I'm definitely no fanboy, the Xbox is my gaming platform of choice. It just works, unlike the ps3 that updates every 5 minutes and I don't have to buy a new video card every week like the PC. Most of my attention during the press conferences is paid right here.

    That's why the past few E3's I've been a little let down as Microsoft has chosen to focus almost solely on the Kinect. Now, it's just fine for dancing and working out, but people only really want one dance game and one workout game. What they end up doing is cramming more advanced games into the Kinect and praying to God that the tech doesn't break on stage while they are doing it. Or worse, they film people ahead of time using the Kinect so people in the audience are left to guess at how broken the final product really will be.

    I've been caught up in the magic before. Microsoft is damn good at parading some hella cute little kids out on the stage and making them pet adorable virtual bears. When I saw that little girl debut the Kinect by playing with her 'tiger', I thought I was watching the future right there. A year later when I played the same game in my store I fussed with the set up for 2 hours before the Kinect finally gave up and so did I.

    Last year was all about making the kinect appeal to the core gaming audience. Projects like Fable Journey were shown and people the game was aimed at kept asking the same question, "Why would I want to play a watered down, broken ass motion game when I can just pick up my controller and play something that is actually half decent." Microsoft failed hard'core' (get it?) with their gambit last year, and I think they have learned their lesson.

    This year I expect them to fully embrace the two different gaming camps of 'casual' and 'core' and understand that there doesn't HAVE to be overlap there to be successful. They don't have to try and get me to play a game with my grandmother to get me to give them my money. The key thing that brings us together is the Xbox itself. My fiance uses the xbox as much as I do, but not for games. Netflix and Zune are the things that bring the casual and core together and my household is the perfect example of that.

    We will see two waves at this year's conference. A new Gears of War has already been announced, and (omg omg omg omg) Alan Wake 2 has been teased very recently. Halo 4 of course is on the docket along with plenty of surprises I'm sure. Then we will see the long line of fake families brought out to dance in front of a fake kinect to show you that gaming isn't all about murder.

    I think the main focus, though, is going to be on what takes place outside of the game. The Xbox Live Gold structure is in need of some major renovation as it's offered the same package for over 6 years. With the recent changes to Playstation Plus, Xbox no longer offers the most media options for the money. For a subscription to Playstation Plus you get free games and movies, along with added speed and connivance. On Xbox Gold, you get to play your games online....that's it. There's no rewards besides the console doing what it should do anyway. Give me a free arcade game, give me higher quality Netflix streaming, make it worth it for me to give you my money instead of to Playstation.

    All in all, Microsoft's conference is guaranteed to be the most boring. Lots of sequels to series that have gotten way to long in the tooth. Gears of War just ended, do I REALLY need a prequel?

    Oh, the Xbox interface is getting ANOTHER tweak, great.

    I don't expect any jaw dropping moments here. This is the filler year until the next gen system drops next Christmas. And I guarantee that next system is going to blow everyone away.

    Sony

    Sony I'm most interested to see as they have the most to prove. Financially they couldn't be in a deeper pit. The Playstation Vita was, by any definition, a failure and the company has delayed so many of it's high profile titles that gamers don't have much faith games like Last Guardian will ever see the light of day. Put simply, if they don't pull a rabbit out of their ass this year Sony will no longer be a threat in the US. (Sony dominates in Europe)

    Microsoft is a ham sandwich, nothing fancy but the job gets done. Sony is a lobster dinner, you have to wait forever and pay out the nose but it's worth it. Recently the service has gotten lax and the waiters are spitting in the food, but what would it take to get back in the good graces? Forgive me for saying this, but be less Japanese.

    American and Japanese sensibilities when it comes to technology are opposed. Games Sony makes don't have a development deadline, instead they are given to game design 'royalty' and then given free reign out of a culture of respect. Now that is all great and lovely, but when it has taken Team Ico 7 years and we still haven't seen gameplay of The Last Guardian, something isn't working right. Naughty Dog has release the entire Uncharted trilogy in that time and it was phenomenal. Sony has to hold their teams to some actual standards, because when a ps3 exclusive does finally make it to shelves it usually changes the industry. Uncharted forever altered how third person shooters are paced. Heavy Rain rebuilt the adventure game. The Last Of Us is looking to be one of the biggest paradigm shifts in game design in the last decade. With such great things to say about Sony it's so sad to see that they are bleeding out in front of us.

    If Sony trots out the stillborn that is the Move I'll be greatly surprised. It elicits only chuckles every time it appears and I don't even want to talk about it to be honest.

    The key to Sony's success is going to be embracing what they used to be - innovators and gourmets. The Playstation is a collection of games as art, but they are constantly trying to sit with the cheerleaders and its ostracizing them. I don't think this year will be any different. It's going to be hard to watch, but Sony will continue to be boring instead of enlightening. If they had any clue how to not loose millions, they would have done it by now.

    Nintendo

    Last year Nintendo announced the Wii U and everyone shrugged. They did a terrible job of showing that the Wii U was an actual brand new console. Instead, it looked like a tablet controller add on for you existing system. Many of the 'casual' groups shown the Wii U didn't show any interest as their Wii was already hidden under a mound of dust bunnies. Their main goal is going to be to really strengthen the Wii U as something new and amazing. They've lost the core crowd and show no interest in getting them back, and they are okay with that.

    The Wii U is going to be marketed as a must have accessory for your living room. The spin will be that Wii U isn't for games, Wii U is to enhance your life. It's a very Japanese sensibility, but unlike Sony's drabness, Nintendo succeeds because they offer Americans cleanliness and simplicity. The reason the Wii U box wasn't shown last year was to emphasize that this isn't about the technology but how it makes your life more clutter free.

    I'm at a loss to what they'll be showing. Will it be the Wii U as a media box? An Ipad like hub for your home full of weather and the youtubes?

    Will it be a top of the line gaming machine for the core? (No)

    Will it be the next leap for the casual gamer? Does the casual gamer even want a next leap?

    This year we're going to find out if Nintendo has made a mistake or not. The Wii U is a terrible and terribly confusing name, and no one actually wants one. Can Nintendo show us just what this thing is and who it's for? I'm excited to find out.

    ______________________________

    I'll be writing about all the other conferences after they happen. I could make some predictions like Beyond Good and Evil 2 or that Assassin's Creed III is going to be the most talked about game of the show, but it's the surprises that make E3 worth being a part of.

    This E3 more than ever will be about the divide in our culture now that my Mom playing farmville is finally considered as much as a gamer as I am with my 80 hours in Diablo III. I'm happy about that, no culture should ever exclude other groups - that's how you end up with North Carolina. Let's just see if the industry can handle the two different extremes without falling apart.

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    deactivated-5e49e9175da37

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    COME ON RIDE THE TRAIN

    HEY RIDE IT

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    Thumbrunner

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    #3  Edited By Thumbrunner

    E3 HYPE TRAIN!!!!

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    #4  Edited By Ghostiet

    MR. SATURN? I DIDN'T EVEN READ THIS POST AND I KNOW IT'S A FOLLOW


    SONIC THE HEDGEHOG LET'S GO

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