I had fun at E3, although given I was there to do mostly industry-focused coverage, I kind of scheduled myself pretty intensely and got surprisingly little time to actually play any video games. So now that it's over, it's time for the usual post-event discussion: What were the "best" games on the floor? Which platform-holder "won"?
...How the hell is anyone supposed to answer that?
As exciting as the event was and as keyed up as I got about a lot of the things I saw from a consumer standpoint, I've got to agree with Mitch Krpata's healthy pragmatism. I mean, sulking through the entire week's presentations because it's all so manufactured is no fun. But at the same time, when I'm asked (and please, stop asking me, I'm a bit tired right now!) some of these "best of E3" type questions, I find myself coming up short.
I hate being asked what I thought of a trailer. Um, it's a trailer? It looks cool, of course, what else am I supposed to say? And I hate the "biggest disappointment" question even more. How'm I supposed to be disappointed by a game that didn't even come out yet, or by the revelation of some technology or other that's at tightest minimum three years away?
In my opinion, it's simply too early to judge with the information we're given. Even if we're watching a gameplay demo and it looks fairly meh or fairly typical, a meh-typical game could still turn out to be glorious, stupid fun once you get your hands on it (no one expected Crackdown to be as awesome as it was -- in spite of flaws -- right?)
And even if you're getting hands on with something that has an awesome game mechanic that looks visually good, and you play an entire level, that still gives you no insight on what the macro view of the experience is. Games can live and die on their pacing, and you just can't get a feel for that in a booth demo.
And when it comes to Microsoft versus Sony versus Nintendo, it's even more of a big question mark. The tech they showed is hardly imminent, firstly, and secondly, who "wins" depends on the implementation. Announcements of first-party exclusives are always cool, but again, you're even less likely to be able to tell if it's a real value add based on just an announcement and teaser.
I tended to say I liked Sony's presentation best, just in accordance with my own tastes as a player, but there are so many variables that you'd be hard-pressed to get me to say what, if any, advantage the PS3 now has. In fact, from a business perspective I'm still putting my vote in the Microsoft corner until the day comes that hardware install bases start to shift. Who knows what'll happen?
And I'm only comparing Sony to Microsoft and neither to Nintendo, because Nintendo is obviously going to keep cornering the same market it has been. Whether either of the next-gens can tap into Nintendo's dominant mainstream is an essential unanswered question, so all one can really do is mull who's winning mindshare in the core market. And mindshare helps, but it ain't gonna feed anyone's kids.
Am I saying E3 is pointless then, like many do? No way (although I do understand their argument). Even though I pretty much loathe hype-speak, I think the volume and spectacle is important for industry PR. And even though I think that it's useless to the press when we just regurgitate it all blindly, I do think there's the opportunity to do useful coverage and pick out interesting trends. For me, I learn a lot from the audience response -- a lot of what I write and don't write, and look at versus overlook, depends on what the community reactions are.
Just don't ask me to pick a winner. Sure, I'm more interested or optimistic about some of the games I saw than others, but that's entirely an expression of personal enthusiasm, and not any kind of qualified opinion on whether or not something's likely to be "good." It's the same kind of challenge writers (and readers!) have with "preview"-type coverage, and I can't tell you how many times during E3 week I was glad to be mainly a trade writer and not the sort that writes previews.
Anyway. My opinion -- and that's all it is -- is that E3 isn't pointless, but using it to determine what is and isn't a game-changer is.
So rather than ask you, "which of the Big Three won E3," I'll ask you which presentation interested you the most, and rather than ask you which was the "best game" slated for the coming year, I'll ask you which you're the most excited about. Fair?
Oh, and if you need refreshment, we've rounded up our major coverage at Gamasutra, from the press conferences to the platform-holders to the major publishers. Take a look!
27 comments:
I hate to say it, but I think Natal interested me more than anything else. I have doubts about Microsoft pulling it off, and having Peter Molyneux talk it up is hardly going to seal the deal for most people, but if when it's released, it's anywhere close to the promises they've made, it'll make the Wii look obsolete.
Which will really annoy me: I own a Wii.
Who cares who "won"? All I care about is about the innovation and the games I am now expecting, regardless of the company that announced them.
Impossible to say it any truer than how you tackled the issue.
Your insight is always alternatively incredible.
I too am so tired of answering/pondering/questioning who "won E3" with the best showing.
But you, Leigh Alexander, truly weaved the entire issue into one coherent, readable, and altogether sound demonstration of what you believe. and I'm with you. 100%
The times when I have worked in or around reviews (either doing them myself or talking to people who do), I always try to work with people's personal feelings on something. Saying something was the "best" is trying to take a highly subjective term and apply it objectively. It's good that you can tell the difference, and I think looking at the industry in terms of crowd reaction is a smart way to go.
That said, I wholeheartedly disagree with your assumption that Big Boss deserves being in the same picture as the word Sexy. And not just because I into women. Basically, my rule is, if I can pull a look off, it's not sexy. Please replace with someone who is better looking then me. It's videogames, so it shouldn't be hard.
But I took it as read as with any con, that whenever someone asks an attendee, "Who do you think won?" A reasonable response is to answer based off of what you saw. What the 'show' was. I didn't think there was a group of people out there saying..."This guy hated how the new Splinter Cell showed...therefore the game is going to be crummy".
If this is the audience you are talking about...are they worth talking about?
I couldn't say who "won," for the same reasons you've rejected the term. There are lots of games that were unveiled that I'm quite eager for, of course. SC: Conviction and Borderlands look stylish, Brink and Brutal Legend look like a lot of fun, etc.
But, personally, Natal is the only large-scale revelation that's really taken root in my mind. I'd love to have a chance to implement a few concepts with that interface, and the fact that it's hands-free opens a lot of potential for ambient effects, even in conjunction with normal controllers.
I suppose, for me, it's the difference between personal interest and professional interest. As a gamer, I want to play the games that are announced. But as a developer, I want to play with the new interface that's announced.
Seeing as how I work in a videogame store (not GameStop we are locally owned) I got asked a lot about E3 last week. Who won, who lost, that kind of fanboy behavior. The only answer I gave them is that gamers won. This year (and 2010 to a lesser degree) will have one or two big games for fans of any genre.
Who won E3 2009? Gamers!
Yeah, I get the same personal-professional conflict. On one hand, I've been a gamer all my life, like most people who write nowadays, and I can remember back to being a teen tapped into E3 coverage online with feverish eagerness. By that token, it's super cool to be at these things and see it all unfolding, and as a consumer -- since I am that, too -- I get really excited for stuff I personally want, even if there's no logic behind it.
But, you know, I have to keep enough of a distance intellectually, and a lot of times my professional opinion trumps my personal opinion (i.e the things i see as being most impactful/relevant/having the most potential are not necessarily things I personally prefer).
I imagine it must be the same for devs -- and what about marketing execs who find themselves badly wanting their rival's game, hee hee?
In some ways, I feel like coverage of the games industry is becoming depressingly similar to coverage of politics. "Who won E3?" is just one symptom of that. There's way too much score-keeping and focus on the "console wars" narrative at the expense of looking for interesting stories and angles. It's one thing for business and trade reporters to focus on this stuff (it's part of the job), but it's becoming a minor obsession among the enthusiast set as well.
Ultimately, we should be the winners, not the console manufacturers, nor the publishing giants. But the fascination of watching their maneuverings is starting to take precedence over finding interesting games and talking to the people who make them. Off the top of my head, all I remember about GDC is OnLive. At this E3, it's motion controllers and Metal Gear going multi-platform.
Not only does this coverage get generic and boring very quickly, but it also seems to tacitly endorse a lot of the things that we otherwise lament about the industry. In between trade shows, people talk about how there's too much copycatting and franchise exploitation. The hardware discussion is dominated by fanboys and haters. The industry is too risk averse and too many good titles don't get the attention they deserve because they don't get the marketing love.
But then, a few times a year, we get breathless press conference liveblogs. Companies tell us exactly how they're going to exploit the hell out of what they already know is popular, and how they're going to rip off one another's ideas. And we celebrate it, repeat it, and maybe even start to internalize it. That worries me.
I pretty much agree with what you said in this article. I follow you on Twitter and when you made the statement in what I'm sure was just a heat of the moment thing that Sony "won" E3, people at my job (Game store, I won't say which one) had the "Wow, really?" face reaction. Personally, I think the "won" factor is about as outdated as numerical game reviews, people want to put a score on it, and in scoring their must be winners and losers. I rhink all 3 had interesting pressers with Microsoft's being the one that interested me the most, however they all appealed to their core, with Sony and MS trying to reach out to the other segment.
@Evan WHOA! Big Boss is way sexy. I'm a hetero dude and I think so.
My interest was most piqued by the Sony conference, mostly because I'm a lot less interested in Natal than other people.
Uncharted 2 excites me more than any other game because I love Nathan Drake and Elena Fischer as characters.
L4D2 is a strong second because I love the series.
Great article, I agree all 3 did well. Also, I know your a big Ico fan, we never got your reaction to their new game Last Guardian what did you think about the new trailer.
I definitely think APB has interested me most, coming out of E3. Everything they've mentioned has excited me in a way any other MMO has failed to do. From it's smaller population servers to keep it from getting overcrowded, the absolutely insane character customisation, and the missions that pit players instantly (and intelligently) against one another, it's definitely the game I'm most looking forward to in the next year.
I'm not a particular fan of the format, but I knew going in that my publication (The Business Insider) would want it.
We define "winning" or "losing" as essentially over- or under-performing expectations. Since expectations are supposedly baked into the current stock price at the time of the pressers, an over- or under-performance should be reflected in some way over the next few months' stock prices.
Would it surprise you to know that SNE has actually performed better than NTDOY over the past year? It did for us. The market doesn't care about install bases - stocks trade on stories, and it's very much a "what have you done for me lately" sort of thing. (And why I hit every publicly traded company on the floor in my wrap - leaving out TTWO and COOL.) Nintendo lacked positive near-term catalysts - NSMB doesn't do it (lose). Sony didn't really have one great thing, but the gestalt of their presentation was surprisingly good (win). Microsoft focused on Natal, a project that may have 18-24 months of gestation before release; that's an incredibly long time (hold).
Early in a console cycle, winning/losing probably has some effect on purchase intent (i.e. most people can only buy one console at a time); at this point, all major third-party games are gonna come out on all platforms eventually, so it's less of an issue for an individual gamer and more of an issue for a financial watcher.
Nintendo was the only one who interested me. I feel like everything that came from Sony or MS was something that I'd known about before (or else a motion control idea that I strongly disliked).
The games that I'm most excited about are Lords of Shadow (feel weird about calling it Castlevania, since it started as something else, from what I've heard) and Other M (which is weird, because I've never had any interest in Ninja Gaiden and I've liked the Metroid Prime games, so far, more in theory than practice... yet Other M is an automatic first day buy from what I've seen)
To be honest, none of them interested me in the slightest bit, only to a small extent. Nintendo's press conference just showed off a heart monitor. How is that supposed to appeal to a loyal fan like me? I haven't seen the press conferences, so my opinion is based on all the announcements/information that I've read.
I think Nintendo is desperately trying to win back their fanbase by bringing out their big guns to help them out again. NSMB Wii- Not interested, Wii Sports Resort- Mildly interested. Metroid: Other M- cautiously optimistic, I'm not too excited. The only DS game that interests me is Golden Sun DS. As for Mario Galaxy 2, quite frankly, I don't care. I think the next Zelda is the most fascinating game Nintendo has up their sleeves. I think that Nintendo is trying to turn the Wii into the "healthy" console for health freaks and whatnot; what's next? they announce a life support machine? I think they're all over the place.
Sony's press conference didn't appeal to me at all save for the so-called "exclusive" The Agent (how long is that gonna last?) and that's about it. The PSP go while a great upgrade, it cannot play the older models' UMD's so I think that's gonna hurt them in the long run. I think that Sony as a Marketer has failed to give me a reason as to why I should get their console, when Microsoft has the exact same things and more. Their motion sensing project is somewhat fascinating, but not really appealing to me.It seems to me that they're also trying hard to win back their fanbase.
Microsoft's press conference had a couple of interesting things such as Alan Wake, Crackdown 2, Mass Effect 2 (which really catches my interest), and a couple of others (Castlevania: LoS, MGS: Rising). However that's for 2010. The rest of this year's games don't appeal to me too much. Halo? as a Nintendo fan for most of my life, it never appealed to me (I do own an Xbox 360),so I could care less about Halo. Also, the fact that the Xbox originals are getting the boot in favor of Platinum Hits 360 games does not sit well with me.On the plus side, it prevents the sale of used games, just with 360 games and not Xbox 1 games unfortunately. Very little first party/ exclusives interest me such as the 2 GTA DLCs for 40 bucks one disc, and Shadow Complex. Also, the bonus chapter for the Single Player Campaign of Gears 2.I think that Project Natal does have a lot of potential, and I'm fascinated to see how far it'll go and what you could do in terms of interacting with games so I suppose Microsoft's press conference caught my interest the most and Nintendo's to a lesser extent.
Unfortunately, most the announcements were for next year, so I think there's isn't anything big to look forward to this year.
I tend to judge E3 by figuring out how many things I just completely did not care about pre-E3 are on my radar post-E3.
This year, Sony did most of that for me. I went form not caring a bit about Uncharted 2 to wanting to preorder it, and the PSP Go actually looks like a gaming platform I could invest money in, instead of... whatever it used to be.
On the Microsoft side, though, Splinter Cell Conviction came out of nowhere to look pretty amazing, entirely on the strength of its presentation and world design. It could be the least fun game in the world to play, but I want to see those mission objectives in person.
I would not say I am excited, but am intensely interested in seeing how Natal develops. In a completely different vein, I'm quite interested in seeing the response to the L4D2 backlash.
I am excited for the New Super Mario Bros. because it will give me something fun to play with my girlfriend, and unexcited about The Last Guardian because I will finally have to scrape up funds for a PS3. :)
The announcement that caught my interest was the new Metroid game by Team Ninja. I'll admit that I was a little relieved to hear that they won't go the slutty route with Samus (Zero Suit notwithstanding). I think that Samus is one of the few female characters that the community doesn't see as just T&A and I'd like it to stay that way.
Michael: I actually once wrote a column about how Samus is one of the few game characters who's earned our respect as a lady!
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2007/09/the_aberrant_gamer_is_a.php
@"The tech they showed is hardly imminent, firstly, and secondly, who "wins" depends on the implementation."
E3 is a PR battle. The winner should be the company (among the big three) that generates the most excitement (and sales) created by leaks, press releases, or demos/trailers at E3.
While I agree that implementation is the bottom line, the PR victor at E3 gets the enthusiast press on its side, and at least for a little while, gets the extra buzz and hype that this entails.
As far as 2009 goes, you have to give the E3 trophy (or achievement) to Microsoft. Sony had the strongest exclusive lineup, but the announcement of the ridiculously priced PSP Go! and the conspicuous absence of any kind price drop for the PS3 really took away from their momentum. Nintendo had a really hot and cold presser, with the highs of new Mario and Metroid, but also the weirdness of the tween stuff and the “vitality sensor.” Factor in that the bulk of Nintendo’s hardcore lineup isn’t hitting shelves until 2010 at the earliest, and you’re left with a bitter taste in your mouth.
Microsoft had the star power out in force at their press conference—the BEATLES, for crying out loud, and a pretty strong lineup. While a lot of their press conference was backed by third party games, the overall buzz generated by their announcements was enough to render HALO (both ODST and Reach) little more than afterthoughts (how remarkable is that?). The presentation was by far the strongest (after all, there was no awkward three point shooting contest or weird note taker), and the Milo and Natal teasers really looked like a true glimpse of the so-called “future”.
While ultimately the title of “E3 2009 Winner” means very little, there’s a strong case for Microsoft to have earned it.
I was entirely underwhelmed by a lot of the big announcements at E3, as I am every year. Natal, something that others coo over and paw at like it's some kind of child messiah seemed very smoke and mirrors to me. APB looked interesting but nothing amazing... I could go on.
Sony's motion controller tech demo was nice. I like the potential there, and I appreciate that they put it in our faces, 1 to 1, unlike Natal.
Anyway, to the point! Every year I come out of my E3 haze to ponder not who "won" the show but which trailers were the best! There were some cracking movies on show this year! My two favourites had to be the Beatles: Rock Band and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
Opinions?
i won E3 cause i got to share a cab w/ Leigh, wait while she laid down the law to get into a party, introduced me to a prominent member of a prominent publisher then proceeded to disappear into thin air :)
E3 was won by all the little known games that got positive coverage. All the rest just got a slight buzz boost that will die off shortly.
i wandered off looking for food and it took me THREE YEARS to find the sushi table.
and besides, winners don't want journalists around while they are rubbing elbows with prominent members of prominent publishers :)
I'm glad to hear that E3 was a blast for the press once again this year. The last two years with the smaller, more industry oriented show things just didn't feel as exciting as a reader.
I don't think in terms of winners, more what the studios are doing. I want to see what Bungie's up to with ODST, and want BioWare to really hit a home run with Mass Effect 2. Assassin's Creed has my attention, of course. There's a lot of other smaller games that look interesting... Boderlands (love post-apoc), Brink, Supreme Commander 2, Brutal Legend...
All the motion controller news is hard for me to get worked up about. Depends on what they do with it, I suppose. The Natal promo had interesting technology, but didn't show anything I'd want to actually play. Not to mention the tech is a ways off, as you pointed out.
Good stuff!
I think of the three presentations, Microsoft's and Sony's really surprised me. There was rumors of an MS motion-sensor device, but I wasn't expecting them to show it early. Or for Sony to follow suit.
Then again, I saw more PS3-exclusives (in name or merely by time-release) that had me enthused. The PSP Go was an utter waste of development time and money, but otherwise it was good.
Nintendo's showing was a bit of a letdown, but for the reverse of the common reaction. Getting Team Ninja on Metroid seems way too manufactured a move to appeal to the mythical "core" audience. I liked New Mario Wii and Mario Galaxy 2. I'm interested in Red Steel 2. Otherwise it felt like Nintendo was trying to "make up" to an audience that no longer cares what is given them, they'll just hate Nintendo all the same.
Overall I'm really glad about the recession (?!) Either because of it or in spite of it the industry is trying hard to stretch each console's lifespan. Although with Natal and PS3 Eye Whatever, I'm sure Nintendo will have to play catch-up with their tech unless consumers won't bite and stick with the Wii.
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