My Adventure at E3 2006
E3 2006 has come and passed and I’ve finally got around to sorting my thoughts and the photos that I took. Overall, the show was underwhelming. I’ve been going to E3 since 1999 when it came back to Los Angeles after a brief stint in Atlanta. I think because I’ve gone to so many E3s and the fact that my tastes have changed due to getting older, I’ve become more cynical of the show. Years of broken promises and missed expectations have overshadowed the occasional jewels that have emerged. Also, as I’ve gotten older, I find that I have less time to play games. I still want to play games but I don’t have 3-4 blocks of hours to play games anymore. If anything I have about 30 minutes up to 1 hour (if I want to give up sleep) to play so this year’s focus was definitely mobile gaming and simple fun factor.
MMORPGs
My general impression is that there are a ton of MMORPGs out there and more coming. Generally speaking, I like MMORPGs but I don’t see how any person can play more than one (or two at a maximum) at any given time. Some games like Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy XI are designed to suck all your time and lock you into their virtual world. Because of the nature of these games, you have to spend time waiting to form parties in order to get anything done. So, it’s not uncommon to wait hours to perform a specific task unless you’ve pre-planned and coordinated with a gangload of people. On top of that, you have the monthly fees. They add up if you’re playing multiple games. Final Fantasy XI costs $12.95/month before you add extra characters. World of Warcraft costs $14.99/month although you can lower that to $12.99/month if you pre-pay for 6 months at a time. So, it all adds up especially if you’re crazy enough to be playing more than one game at a time.
Of course, I’ll have to pimp my buddy’s game Hellgate London as one of the more intriguing MMORPG games coming out for the PC. There’s actually a story and a single player mode that’s the primary game as well as the online component. It’s neat because you can play in both 3rd or 1st person. The game plays well so far and should be a great game…especially since these are the core people who brought you Diablo, Warcraft, etc.
SONY
While there was some PS3 buzz, it seemed that Sony was severely lacking at this year’s show. Despite their huge booth comprising of PS3, PS2, and PSP, there just wasn’t a lot of excitement at their booth. The PS3 had a few interesting demos out using the PS3 development boxes with the most notable being Heavenly Sword. Sony had a variety of game trailers on their big screen and the most anticipated title seems to be Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, created by the Prince of Persia developers. The trailer (which is a cut-scene) looks amazing and for the lucky few that got to see the game behind closed doors, the game itself will be equally amazing…a possible system seller no less! The Grand Turismo HD demo looked pretty decent although my driving enthusiast friend commented on how they still haven’t solved the non-round tires. Of course, it’s nowhere near done and the textures have to be completely redone and they’ll probably need to use higher polygon models for both the environments and the cars. Sony gets a thumbs down for creating a “fake line” where the wait was around 30 minutes. However, the line wasn’t for anything really exclusive. Instead, all it was for was to be able to go to the second level of their booth and look down on everyone. There were a bunch of tech demos up there and some games that were already on the floor but hardly anything worth waiting in line for. Bad Sony! A slap on the wrist for that.
The PSP display was interesting at first since you could download a bunch of PSP titles to try out. The only problem was that once you turned off your system you would lose the game demos. Since they were demos, I thought it would be nice to have them to try later. Earlier this month, LocoRoco for the PSP was available for a free download and that was saved to the memory card of your PSP. They also had a booth where you could plug-in to upgrade your PSP to 2.70 and download a bunch of worthless game trailers, audio files, and image files. There were some new titles for the PSP but I felt some of them just weren’t good fits. For instance, the new Lemmings game for the PSP initially had me excited until I actually played it. The analog stick is so slow to control the cursor. It’s fine for early stages but the latter stages of Lemmings can get frantic so it could be frustrating. There was a Namco racing game featuring famous Namco characters that was strikingly similar to Mario Kart. While it looked really nice, the controls for the game needed some work.
Square-Enix
This was the only thing I missed. Actually, I made it to the booth and saw all of the demos but I never made it into the Square-Enix theatre since tickets were sold out every day that I was there. The big thing to see was the trailer for the Final Fantasy XIII game; however, I ended up seeing essentially the same thing online so it wasn’t too big of a deal. They have some interesting franchise titles coming up for DS, PSP, and the PS2 but there really wasn’t anything that blew me away…not even the Mithra that were hanging around the booth!
Xbox 360
I was mostly not interested in Xbox 360. I’m not sure why but the system just doesn’t seem interesting to me. Most of the games look good but there doesn’t seem to be any game that just stands out…that is, until my friend and I saw and tried out Lost Planet. That game looks amazing and it plays pretty well. It’s a 3rd person action game with gorgeous environmental graphics. So far, that’s the one game that may make me justify an Xbox 360…well, that and using the Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender. The only other interesting game I noticed at N3 (Ninety Nine Nights), another 3rd person action game, that allows you to chain hundred plus attack chains and keeps records of kills in the thousands. I did like the XBox demo areas. Each had a chair for the attendee facing outward with their own screen. There was another screen on the other side for onlookers to see the game. This was clever so the gamer could enjoy the title without feeling heavy breathing and sweaty geeks over his/her shoulder or getting stabbed in the back by oversized bags filled with large inflatable swag. Good job Microsoft!
Nintendo
I’m sure everyone knows by now that E3 2006 was all about Nintendo. The buzz for the DS Lite was tremendous and completely overshadowed the PSPs announcements of new future add-ons and accessories (4-8GB MS PRO Duo, GPS, and Camera) and software. The DS Lite looks and feels very good. The screen is vastly superior to any prior Nintendo portable. In fact, it’s better than the PSP screen in regards to contrast, brightness, saturation, and glare despite being smaller. Also, both screens are now virtually identical in quality unlike the original DS where the touch screen wasn’t quite the same as the top screen. Nintendo was only showing the white ones (which will be released on June 11th) but I found a booth by a software developer that had the Ice Blue and Enamel Navy models on display. The white and Ice Blue models hide fingerprints like you would expect while the Navy Blue model is a magnet for fingerprints not unlike the black iPods or the Sony PSP. Anyways, the buttons are crispier than the original DS and the device feels really nice in your hand. Of course, there are more good games coming and they all look amazing on the DS Lite’s new screen.
The Wii was the “it” product of the entire show. The buzz was tremendous and the lines to see it are now legendary. During my three days visiting the show, I was continually thwarted in my quest to see the Wii which was in a special section of the Nintendo booth. I basically saw everything I wanted to see on the first two days and devoted the final day for Wii. Imagine this…the doors opened at 9am. I got in line by 9:08am but I was already 3 hours away from getting in. By the time I was allowed into the booth it was 12:21pm. Yes, over 3 hours and I was one of the lucky ones. Most people actually waited an average of 4 hours to get in. Thank goodness for the DS since me and my buddy were able to play games with random people in line. Also, as we got closer to the front, Nintendo placed these huge plasma monitors along the line with people “inside” of them. They were had cameras and microphones setup so they could entertain us while we were in line. A clever touch indeed!
Was it worth it?
Yes, it was worth the wait. The layout of their booth was actually pretty nice with an introduction to the system. I found it charming that they had legendary composer Koji Kondo playing the music conductor game (conducting to the Legend of Zelda theme song no less). There were two Nintendo employees demonstrating the tennis game and yet another playing the Metroid 3 game while seated.
Next, they had the glamour setup of the hardware so you could see all of the components that they had thought of so far. One can only imagine the different types of add-ons they will come up with for future titles. The Wii unit is so small compared to the other next-generation consoles and it looks really slick. The controllers themselves are much smaller in person if you’ve only seen the press photos of it.
The following area immediately takes you to the lifestyle setups where they have several mock living room areas where people can try out some of the titles. They had Red Steel, Madden 07 (i think), Super Mario Galaxy, the tennis game, the conductor game, and Zelda. The line to try out these games were also quite long. For some titles, the list was several pages. Personally, I tried out the tennis game and it was immediately intuitive and fun. In fact, I noticed that for most of the games, most people just sat down and more or less figured out how to play in a matter of minutes or less. As I looked around, most of the game displays didn’t have large signs showing a button map unlike ones I saw for the Playstation or Xbox 360. This fact alone already ensures that the Wii will sell well and it will attract the new demographic they’re seeking. Once people figured out the controls and the necessary sensitivity, most people were completely immersed in what they were playing. There were no apparent graphic glitches or slow frame rates and most games looked pretty good.
The last area had more modest setups for the games and the lines there were huge as well with many going at least 7-8 deep per display. The virtual console was also pretty neat and the old school titles looked good and played as you would expect. I saw a Sega title (original Sonic the Hedgehog) and an original Nintendo title (Super Mario Bros).
Overall, I don’t know if Nintendo is going to become the market leader but their presence will definitely be felt in this next generation round and I think they will achieve their goal of expanding the market for the benefit of the industry. Sony and Microsoft should be thanking Nintendo for doing so since they have failed to do so.
Miscellaneous Pictures
