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E3 - So, How Did It Go?
With all of the journalists at last week's E3 event home and rested, the post-game analysis is definitely something to take note of. The elbow room at Barker hanger was appreciated, but many folks were frustrated that the hotel and hanger format was hell on shoe leather. Despite that, everyone seemed to appreciate the ability to actually hear and play the games, even if it meant that they couldn't make it around to every single title this year. The only person I saw saying that the event was an unqualified failure was Michael Pachter, the well-known games industry analyst. Calling the event 'a terrible disappointment', Pachter lamented the almost complete lack of coverage from the mainstream press; a result of the removal of the public and consumer-focused elements of the show. For the views of industry heavyweights, Kotaku put the question to Sony's Jack Tretton, Microsoft's Peter Moore, and Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto. Their quote from Tretton summed it up nicely, I think: 'From a personal standpoint I think we need to figure out why we're doing E3.'
"The only person I saw saying that the event was an unqualified failure was Michael Pachter, the well-known games industry."
Did anyone read this before posting it? I mean subtle spelling and punctuation mistakes slip through, but there's a freaking word missing here.
My favorite is what they're doing with the new version of the PSP. Of course, Sony could have named it something like... PSP lite, PSP-2, etc. Instead, the morons name it PSP-2000. That's so.. 1999. I'm surprised they didn't make it more "hip" and call it the PSP-2k.
From a consumer's standpoint, it was terribly boring. Most surprises you could count on one hand. Last year's E3 was much better, in my opinion.
But this year's E3 wasn't bad. It just seemed not to be... for us. Nintendo's presentation seemed especially aimed at investors and other developers. The sooner you can get someone to join your platform, the sooner you can have a lot of great third party titles, which has been a Nintendo console weakness the past ten years. The message seemed to be, "We're doing well. Developers, join us if you haven't already done so. It's worth the investment of time and money."
Sony's was actually wonderful, compared to last year's embarassment. At least most of the games announced seem to be available in the next 18 months and not years and years off.
Microsoft's I didn't see.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Since the whole POINT of the show is now the journalists, shouldn't it have totally centered around them?
That's a common misconception. It is NOT about the journalists. It's an industry business to business conference, where hardware and software producers network with the distributors. It evolved into a media circus and now is used to market games to the public, but the reason for the big change this year is that the big names threatened to withdraw if the public and the 3rd-tier journalists weren't excluded.