Slashdot Mirror
E3 Wrapup Documented
mindless4210 writes "The new Nokia N-Gage, shown at E3, looks promising, but Nokia better be prepared to compete with Sony and Nintendo. Nokia is betting the N-Gage's wireless communication abilities will set it apart and allow multiplayer gaming to move away from computers and living-room consoles and into consumers' pockets." Reader harikiri writes "According to the BBC, the much-maligned Infinium Labs has showcased their Phantom console at E3. Apparently Infinium have made agreements with AMD and Nvidia to provide the processor and graphics controller. The specs seem very respectable: a 2.5GHz AMD processor, 256MB RAM and a 40GB HDD." Reader Ipingforpong writes "E3, probably the most well known video game trade show was assaulted by the U.S. Army in a promotion for America's Army. Soldiers rappelled out of a real Blackhawk helicopter with real rifles and rushed the show."
Each year the amount of glitz and frivolous (ie, non-gaming related) material seem to increase quite significantly. Between Army antics and PR fluff, fewer and fewer titles of substance are actually playable, and the attention of the gaming press has become less focused on the games than their promotion.
Is this to compensate for the decreasing number and quality of the games that are showcased, or does it simply reflect the fact that the Western games industry is increasingly mainstream?
---------- Jaani.net -- internet law and technology
Does anyone have any sales figures on the original N-Gage? I can't imagine that the sales were decent enough that they felt they could give it another shot. Perhaps they just have a lot of extra money that they don't want to be burdened with. Money is a rather cumbersome thing for some people, I guess.
-Vendal Thornheart
There's also the yearly return of ever delicious boothbabes.
And since my company PlayLogicGames also exhibited it's line-up on the show, thought I'd say hi.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
It's been exhausting covering it, especially when you get slashdotted half way through!
Still, at least I get a rest from E3 action until e3 2005, which is scheduled for May 18-20 2005
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
I'm a writer for FileFront.com, and let me tell you, this year's E3 was great. There are a ton of great games coming out in the next year, and although you hear day-after-day about all the new MMORPGs coming out, make sure you keep an eye out on the great FPSs (Half-Life 2 and Doom 3), 3rd-person action/adventure (Fable and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) and RTSs (Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War) coming out this year as well.
Check out all of the coverage that my coworkers and I put together at our E3 2004 Coverage Page. Lot's of great stuff there.
Trent Polack
www.polycat.net
E3, probably the most well known video game trade show was assaulted by the U.S. Army in a promotion for America's Army. Soldiers rappelled out of a real Blackhawk helicopter with real rifles and rushed the show.
They performed the same stunt, last year, right as I was about to cross the street to walk in. A guy in full green camoflage, green and black facepaint and carrying a machine gun walked up to me and told me to please stand back for a few minutes. Applying my rule of never arguing with people holding real machineguns, I did as he asked.
Sadly, given my never argue rule, I never did get to ask why the in God's name the US Army thought it was intelligent to wear GREEN camoflage in Los Angeles of all places. Concrete gray mixed with a dirty smog brown, perhaps. Green though...?
I guess the Army finally listened to Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam:
We've got a special man in the audience today right now. Its Mr. Leo. He's a fashion consultant for the Army. 'Why thank you Adrian. I'm just very happy to be here. I want to tell you something. You know, this whole camoflague thing for me doesn't work very well.' Why is that? 'Well you...because you go into the jungle I can't see you. You know, its like wearing stripes and plaid. For me, I want to do something different. If you go into the jungle, make a statement. If you're going to fight, clash.
I am used to read a lot of bad press about the Ngage, including Slashdot. You might have the impression that such a bad and unpopular phone/console would be cheap to snatch up on eBay and similar places.
When I decided I wanted an MP3 player built into a phone, and that I would try to getthat combo by buying a second-hand Ngage, I was very disappointed: Ngage are auctioned off at very respectable prices. High enough that I am made to wonder if I would rather buy a separate MP3 player after all.
So, the only logical conclusion I can draw is: Ngage customers seem to be very satisfied with it. There just isn't enough people parting with their Ngage, to have the prices drop.
Sigged!
Though everyone mocks Phantom and Infinium Labs's aggressive attitude toward internet users, if Infinium Labs can persuade some notable PC developers to join in its camp, it may be nice competition to Xbox, as "better Xbox without Live". Or is it supposed to have reasonable network support? If it has network multiplay, it's almost like Xbox 1.5.
Innovation: How long before someone releases yet another PC-in-a-home-theater-acceptable-box that can combine the functionality of all the other boxes?
All we need is a single damned box that can work as a DVR, play games on a Microsoft OS, purchase new games over the Internet, and play against other people over the Internet as well.
Whoever can come up with ONE SINGLE DEVICE that can do all these things will be rich! Perhaps we can call it the "Plethora of Consoles" (PC). It'll be like nothing else!
While the focus on recent years' E3 seems to have been on consoles, handhelds seem to have been the primary focus, with the DS, PSP, and N-Gage 2 all seeing the light of day. In this age of ever-shrinking technology, is there any chance that this could be the direction that the video game industry is headed? Could consoles go the way of the dodo ten years down the line? At least two of the handheld offerings this year seem very strong, and with their wireless connectivity abilities and graphics similar to those of home consoles, the handheld system may begin to be seen as little more than a cheaper alternative to a console system.
Emphasis mine. No sane army in the world would use real weapons with real live ammo in a non-combat situation. Doing so pretty much breaches every protocol, regulation and whatever else there is regarding safety. Maybe they used training rifles ( You know, often seen on Discovery... M16 variants with tiny orange thingy at the end of the barrel ) that fired blanks, perhaps. I doubt that in a non-combat situation even blanks would be allowed, loaded in rifles.
So less hype and more common sense, please.
Hate me!
Max Hoberman, multiplayer lead developer at Bungie Studios, told BBC News Online: "When we made Halo we never realised that the multiplayer element of the game would be so popular.
Now this is, ladies and gentlemen, what I call a silly tit. Who would have guessed? Multiplayer? Popular? And this is supposed to be a spokesman of Bungie, of all companies -- apparently he hasn't noticed how wildly successful their previous multiplayer games were, from Minotaur (with no singleplayer option!) to Marathon to Myth.
"I seem to have mastered a certain amount of control over physical reality."
One of the biggest surprises at E3 was Rockstar's publication of info and screenshots of Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas. There was much speculation that there would be no releases until much later (it is, after all, a late October release). For info/screenshots, check GTA-SA.com. They're f*#$ing brilliant.
I think its worth pointing out that the mouse and keyboard combo looks like an interestingly designed piece of technology. Its shaped so that the entire thing can sit on your lap comfortably. The keyboard appears to be adjustible and the thing itself acts as the mouse mat. I would be slightly concerned that the mouse mat area is too close to the keyboard so perhaps that limits its use. IGN has a CGI mockup of it here and a real once can be seen in the BBC article linked too in the story.
Hardware aside I haven't actually seen any reports of software that runs on the thing. Did anyone who attend E3 get the chance to playtest one? As far as I can tell it was only the box on display and it may of only had a basic running demo.
The last thing I want to mention is about their distribution model. They claim they want to make software downloadable via broadband internet connections. Thats all fair and well but does anyone out there remember The Sega Channel? Long story short it was a cable channel that allowed you to download Genesis games directly onto your console. I don't believe it faired to well but given the popularity of XBox live and PS2 Online it shows that there is more of a likely uptake.
BTW, anyone interested in the Sega channel should have a look here and here.
-- Enditallnow
AAO has nailed it. it's all about the "Honor" system that they created - it's an implicit anti-idiot feature which all but eliminates the morons that show up online when you are playing.
BF1942 would be a great game, if it weren't for all the tards that show up. they need the honor system - AFAIK AAO is the first and only online game that uses it. here is why this is important.
the gaming industry is HUGE - it is bigger than the theaterical movie theater industry (ie. revenue from ALL movies in ALL theaters in the US doesn't even come close to touching the revenue from GAMES.)
in fact, if you combine all the money made by LOTR it's about the same as Madden Football (and that game didnt cost a zillion dollars to make)
anyway - so dis the US army all you want, but they are paving the way for serious anti-idiot game play.
w00t.
You're right: handhelds definitely had the spotlight this year. One odd exception was mobile phone based gaming -- even with NGage 2 it seemed like it was a hotter topic last year than now.
Personally I doubt consoles are going away any time soon -- I think there's a lot to be said for playing a game on a big screen on your couch. That said, I do think that the PC market will continue to decline -- mobile devices will cater to the solitaire/minesweeper type gamer, while consoles (with their increasing cpu power and online capabilities) will make further inroads into genre's typically reserved for PC's. But who knows...
There's only one thing out of the entire E3 news that interests me: Myst IV. They were demoing it at E3 and even Rand Miller showed up a couple of times and was mobbed by a few rabid Myst fans! :)
Myst IV looks like it will be fantastic, possibly the best title in the Myst series yet. Check out the developer's blog at:
http://revelatione3team.blogspot.com/
Cheers,
Jared
Yet, think about it. Play these games, have a lot of fun, then realize "Hey...if that had been real, I wouldn't have been able to respawn those 20 times I died...do I really want to do that kind of thing in real life???" and then run at warp 10 away from the recruiter. That's what I'd do, anyway.
Doesn't seem like it should be a good recruiting tool at all.
What's Fallujah like this time of year?
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Good to see the phantom is a real company after all. but...
a 2.5GHz AMD processor, 256MB RAM and a 40GB HDD. and It comes free only if customers sign up for a two-year subscription - it costs $199 without a subscription.
That's a lot of system for $199. How long until it gets hacked and turned into a l33t gaming box. I can't imagine making a profit on the system with a price scheme like that, so watch for Phantom related DMCA lawsuits about a month after launch. If it can be done on an Xbox, which was nice at 300, it will be done twice as fast on this 200 dollar system. Also, a few of these will most likely end up at garage sales for 20 bucks once the suburban kids want the next gamer-toy, which is a nice price for just the RAM.
SAILING MISHAP
... and I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but doesn't the Phantom console look like the Deluxe George Foreman grill?
If it grills my hot dogs while I'm fragging people, well, then the only thing left is a cupholder in the lap pad.
Maybe they had the right idea all along....
[Dennis Leary]Naaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!![/Dennis Leary]
T.
This space for rent.
PSP: Clearly this was shown only because of the Nintendo DS. Someone told me that Nothing shown on the PSP looked even remotely close to being complete. I heard some analyst predicting March 05 but I think even December 05 would be optimistic. That said, I think that it has potential -- it's just too soon to tell.
Nintendo DS: For me, this was the biggest surprise of the show. I had low expectations, and had serious doubts as to how dual screens or a touch screen could add much to gameplay. Boy was I wrong. The games they were showing were amazing. It turns out that the stylus makes FPS gaming on a handheld quite workable. For the Metroid game, you move/strafe with d-pad, and pivot/shoot by moving your stylus on the touch-pad... genious!! Even the chat program was a blast. If this thing sells for less than $150 I think it will do quite well. Very curious to see the pricetag.
Half-Life 2: Still impressive, but you can tell that the community good-will is fading. At the demo I attended, when Gabe Newell said the release date would be sometime this summer, some guy got a few laughs by blurting out "For real this time??". Gabe was not amused.
Doom 3 (X-Box): While I'm sure the PC version will be quite awesome, I was unimpressed by the X-box version. Obviously it can't look as good as the PC version, but it didn't even seem to set a high-water mark for XBox. Didn't seem very fun to play. Still, I'll reserve judgement for the final product.
Chronicles of Riddick: Much like Vin Diesel's performance in Knockaround Guys, this game was surprisingly good. This could have easily been shovelware, but this is a game that could stand on its own without any licensing. Seemed like it had some innovative ideas for an FPS. It's hard to explain, but the viewpoint is more immersive. For example, you could look down and see your feet, your character casts his shadow on the wall, and a lot of little touches that gave you the environmental "perspective" of a third-person shooter.
NGage 2: Doomed. Booth had very little foot traffic. There were always more kiosks than people (a bad sign at e3), and half the people there were Nokia staff. New form factor is better, but the hardware is the same (still underpowered) and it still feels awkward both as a phone or a portable gaming device. What is Nokia thinking?
Nintendo showing (not including DS): Impressive, just like last year (though the konga game seems a bit silly).
XBox Showing: Impressive, unlike last year.
Sony showing: generally a disappointment.
Lots of other little things (maybe I'll add to this thread later), but those are the standouts. What did you guys think was neat / lame?
I was in it. A Elementalist/Ranger by the name of EagleR Jansen. I enjoyed it. The missions and PvP were good, and the solo area was a nice touch. The end of the event party in Town district 28 was great fun.
Marvin knew: "Think of a number, any number..."
Well, it comes out of there advertising budget. That monay is already slated for something besides HumVee armor.
Should there be less money in the advertising side of things? who knows. From what I have heard, America's Army has been a huge success for recruitment. People jumping out of cool helicopters is always good for recruitment.
So its result per dollar has been very high. It seems to me they are saving money. More recruits per dollar, means fewerdollars needed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm sure something got lost in translation here. We all know AMD doesn't have any 2.5GHz processors. Possibly they meant a 2500+, I dunno.
Regardless, looks like the Phantom is actually just a PC under the hood with some interface for downloading games off the web. Not too terribly different from the ApeXtreme when all is said and done. Except of course that they want you to pay $30/month, which I guess isn't bad if they have a large selection of quality games with no ugly restrictions on play. That being the case, it might compare well in terms of cost/benefit to conventional systems, but I wouldn't bet money on it...
I thought it was the video games that were violent!
... and, so began, the legend of the Five-point Atkins Exploding Heart Technique!
It's not a private endorsement. The game actually was made by the US Army. Therefore, they were endorsing themselves.
I was at E3 for the first two days, and I pretty much agree with your points.
I tried the N-Gage 2 (the Q-Deck, as they call it). What will ultimately kill that thing is that playing games on it just sucks. The buttons are too close together to press individually.
I also chose to wait in line for the DS showing. And happily, I also got to play the thing. Metroid Hunters looks pretty good, especially for a 3d game on that small of a screen (the 2nd screen is just an overhead wire frame map). Playing with the stylus is very strange though.
Pictures of the DS exist so I wont bother describing the appearance. What it does have is 6 buttons (a, b, x, y, l, and r) plus start and select. The lower screen is pressure sensitive, and is intended to be used with a stylus. It will have wirelss communication, and will be WiFi enabled (801.11 compatible), so it will have some internet functionality. The games I tried on it were remarkably complete looking, and there were a decent number of them.
I spent alot of time in and near the Nintendo area. Aside from the flagship games, I think that Odama (RTS Pinball, yes, thats right, RTS Pinball) will turn out to be a pretty damn good game.
I also stopped by the Phantom booth. The damn thing does exist, and it does use a controller. The downsides is that the version they displayed had exactly 1 controller port. While network play is a good thing, they should realize that people actually do tend to have friends come over and visit once in a while. The controller is basically decent, but un-impressive. Basically a better version of the 6 button Sega Genesis controller.
Also, as far as PC games go, one that looked pretty good was Pariah, a FPS game with vehicles. While the gameplay may be revolutionary, it does look pretty damn nice.
END COMMUNICATION
Its also about the smaller, low profile suprises.
While the big games were crowded, E3 is also the place where you can get early word of mouth about your game in the most darwinian envronment.
I was at the show, and saw a handfull of suprises that caught my attention. As an example, Pariah (on the PC, and developed by Digital Extreemes Toronto) and Odama (Game cube RTS Pinball) were both very well spoken of by everyone who played them that I spoke to. Also, chronicles of Riddick is getting alot of good word of mouth.
While E3 may get alot of upfront coverage from the big 3, the show lasts for 3 days, and you have plenty of time to see everything. And the lower profile games are less crowded then the big ones.
While the top 4 games on a top 10 lists will likely be no brainers (Half life 2, Doom 3, Metroid Echos), E3 is where the gaming media figures out what the other 6 games on that top 10 list will be.
Its also where developers get a chance to get their eyes and their hands on the competition, and can figure out if their game is able to compete. Its better to see and implement a good idea from a competitor that you saw at E3 then it is to discover a killer feature when your competition hits retail.
While the press conferences may cover everything in advance for the public, the show is not for the public. Its for the game media, and the developers. Thats why you and the rest of the general public arent invited.
END COMMUNICATION
"America's Army", the game, is a recruiting tool for the U.S. Army, paid for and run by the U.S. Army. Much of the operation is outsourced, but the whole point is to recruit people into the U.S. Army. "Going to the next level" has a special meaning there.
Pretty much the Honor systems is like levels and experience points: the better you do at things like your mission, keeping your troops alive, patching up wounded soldiers and not blowing the hell out of your own team with the RPG the higher you score. Your score gets kept as experience points and you increase in Honor levels with success. Higher levels need more points needed to advance, etc. And you can lose Honor levels with Rules of Engagement violations like shooting your own team or civilians (and friendly fire detection is always on). You also get little incentives for to increase in Honor, like unlocking the Special Forces at 15 Honor and official 'Elite' servers that you need to have 25 Honor to join.
As you sign in with an account and the official servers ban you if your Honor drops below 9 (it starts at 10) then there are very few TKers willing to put up with the crap of creating a new account all the time. Which only leaves the cheaters...
I was hoping the Army would, you know, hunt them down and gut them - but no such luck.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
I played around with the PSP a bit at E3, and I was initially very impressed with it. The screen is especially nice and the movies playing on it looked incredible. The performance for the games really varied in quality from barely PS1 quality to almost PS2 quality.
However, after thinking about it a while, I realized that there are some big problems with it.
1. It's a little bit too big to be truly portable. You can't really put it in your pocket, nor is there the built in screen protection that the SP (or DS) provides. The pictures they prepared showed a bunch of people wearing it around their necks, as if that was the recommended way of transporting it. The only thing geekier than that is sidetalkin.
2. It's going to be expensive. There is no way that piece of hardware is going to be under 200 bucks, even if sold at a loss. Look at all of Sony's other handheld products like the Clies. They are all expensive for what they are even while they have smaller screens and no internal media drive or fancy graphics processing. No Sony rep would even give me a ballpark figure of the price.
3. The battery life is going to be a big problem. I asked someone at the Sony booth about this and you could tell the response they had prepared was very calculated. "It's 10 hours, but..." and they'd go into this spiel about how it all depends on how the developers do things and how much drive access the game has and such.
If you've used any of the recent PDAs you know you cannot expect much more than maybe 2.5 hours of gameplay where you have a color screen, lots of on-screen action, and sound turned on. Now that's with no media drive and no memory card read/writes.
Any PS2 equivalent game is going to use the drive almost as much as a PS2 game would, which as we all know is a lot. If you're going to have a GTA style world you will still need to stream in all the geometry and textures by hitting the disc a lot. If you're going to have the good sports game commentary audio still, you'll have to hit the disc a lot. Basically, if they are going to deliver on the promise of near-PS2 quality games, they are going to have to have games that use the media drive almost constantly.
Running a motor is going to drain the heck out of the batteries even further, even if it's some sort of power-optimized drive. I really wonder if they can get even a couple of hours of PS2-style disc read usage out of it. Anonymous developer reports that have been posted online recently seem to confirm this problem.
These issues seem to make the PSP barely qualified as a portable system. A lot of people might say, "Oh, well who needs over an hour or two of battery life anyways?" Anyone who actually plays their portables would instantly say, "Me." And of course, if you were actually going to want to watch a full-length movie you'll need that much battery too.
If it's not qualified to be a portable, what is it qualified to do? If you're stuck just playing it at home while it's plugged in to a socket, why not just play a regular console game? The console systems are all going to be much cheaper than the PSP anyways, while I doubt the PSP games will be any cheaper. PS2 quality games means PS2 quality development costs which means full price games, while the consumer expects to pay less than console game prices for a portable game.
As many past failed portables show, a portable needs to be truly portable to succeed. Being extra powerful, which seems like it could only be a plus, becomes an albatross once you don't have the battery life to support it.
Let me guess, at the end of a map, a talking shrub comes and says "I'm sorry Mario, but Osama bin Laden is in another castle. Go invade another country"?
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
"America's Army", the game, is a recruiting tool for the U.S. Army, paid for and run by the U.S. Army. Much of the operation is outsourced, but the whole point is to recruit people into the U.S. Army. "Going to the next level" has a special meaning there.
Uh sure can I have that X-files dvd when you are done with it?
Sorry, I didnt want to be rude but I couldnt help myself, what you are saying actually looks like the truth to many , but if you were a bit more into games and fps in general you'd probably knew that the army actually uses FPS in their training exercises NOT because it teaches them weapon use (like the media has tried to convince us) or because they have some brain washing technology but because it allows them to create realtime battle strategies and ammo conservation (among some other things) actually full spectrum warrior was before a full classified game made for squad leaders so they can understand advance alfa-bravo zulu procedures (team1 do this, team 2 do this, at the order of zulu).
At the last instance the game does work as a recruitment tool of sorts, but the actual reason they are giving it away for free (now that is unclassified) is because YOU paid for it with your tax dollars (you didnt thought they would use it to fix roads or build schools did you?). They SHOULD do the same with full spectrum warrior but somehow they were able to sell it to another publishing company.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here