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Sony’s conference at E3 this year consisted mostly of self-aggrandizement and jabs at other gaming companies, and a lot of previews that made me excited. I guess Sony has the one-up this year since a lot of what people want from the console hasn’t actually been released yet, unlike Microsoft which released Halo 3
on the 360 and suddenly found themselves without anything that people were actually waiting for, except maybe Fable 2 which is made by Peter Molyneaux which means that half of what he’s said about it won’t be in the actual game. Sony’s currently waiting on half of its big propaganda movers like LittleBigPlanet and Killzone 2 and Resistance 2. The other half–Heavenly Sword and MGS4–have already come out and have helped establish the system. Much like Gears of War and then later Halo 3 for the 360.

Why am I the only person drawing parallelisms?

Anyway, to the conference.

The Good: Greatest Hits games being released. That means I can finally get Sigma for cheap. Though most people who have a PS3 already have these games anyway. It’s really just there to get people to buy more consoles since those games are cheaper. Revealing PS2, PSN and PSP content. The PS2 is still alive? Apparently. Even so much that it’s getting The Force Unleashed. How? Search me.

PSN Video is finally out, and I can rent movies without going anywhere. It’s not as awesome as Netflix, but who wants to pay for Live and Netflix subscriptions anyway? I don’t watch enough movies to care all too much. The feature is cool.

God of War 3 finally announced. Apparently the CGI trailer revealed at E3 is supposed to resemble the actual graphics of the game. That’s kind of scary. Now I’ll need to get it or be killed.

LittleBigPlanet is looking more cute than ever. Apparently you can make PowerPoint Presentations with it. You know I’m never going to use Office again. Sony is also getting two MMOs on the console: DC Universe Online and The Agency. Wow.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm and Fallout 3 (also out on 360) look great. Both are on my to-get list. I’m going to be poor.

Sony reveals MAG: Massive Action Game (or Mega Awesome Game in my book) which is finally what feels like an all-out war between two teams of 128 players, each divided into squads of 8, led by one particularly talented player. Lots of awesome.

The Bad: First off, I want to say that I in no way condone anyone talking like their console is cooler than sliced bread and sounding like you’re in an infomercial, even Sony. This goes for Nintendo and Microsoft, too. This E3 was filled with words like “successful” and “engaging” and “most” and smatterings of features everywhere (“Blu Ray Storage capacities” and “crisp high-definition” and “innovative gameplay”) and Sony was just irritating as they overflattered their system.

PS2 is dead. Leave it alone, Sony. They keep releasing bad softcore versions of next-gen games on the PS2 and Wii and it’s driving me crazy. Wii Rock Band and PS2 Rock Band were awful. Just get with the program.

Nobody likes Buzz. I don’t know anyone who thinks Buzz is a cool game. Why are we getting seven hundred different versions of it? And SingStar is fine, but do you have to make a new version every two months?

You talked way too much about stuff we don’t really care about. Also, releasing two MMO simultaneously is really bad business. Of course, Sony still hasn’t caught on to the MMO craze, since they’re responsible for the disasters that are Everquest 2, Star Wars Galaxies and The Matrix Online–all of which I have played recently and been frustratingly disappointed with.

What happened to Final Fantasy? Are you going to talk about it? Where’s FFXIII Versus? That’s still an exclusive, right?

And of course there’s the fact that the conference was mostly filled with fluff of developers talking about how awesome the PS3 is and not about how many other games and features we want to see. When’s Home coming out? What’s the new stuff Kojima’s working on? What about Zone of the Enders 3? Or Heavy Rain? The elusive Quantic Dream title was shown behind closed doors, but why?

Sony has plenty lined up for the future–they just refused to share it with us, and instead gave us a lot of lofty crap about how awesome they are. At least they didn’t throw too many numbers at us like Nintendo did, and end with words about how much they’re not a fad. But still, the lack of information was bothersome.

Also, the PS3 80 gig at $399 is not a price cut. It’s a 40gig with 40 gigs more space. Not that Sony ever said it was a price cut, but it was conveniently misleading. So while it’s better for the buyer–get a bit more bang for your buck–remember, it’s not the same as an old 80 gig, which has a few hardware advantages.

In the end, I liked the Sony conference. I had my qualms with it, but I hated the other companies’. I guess you could say that makes me a fanboy, but to be honest it’s just logic that goes into my appreciation for the PS3. The Wii is an overhyped gimmick. The Xbox 360 is a faulty tool that doesn’t push next-gen far enough. In the end I like the flashiest, most powerful and most accessible technology. I don’t pay monthly fees and I don’t have friend codes to bother with. The PS3 and I are a perfect match.

Sony is just evil.

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Okay, so this post came much later than it was supposed to. So sue me. I’m here.

Nintendo’s skinny comes as a surprise–before E3, they were boasting the best sales in the console race to the point where they’re no longer part of it–the Wii is no longer considered next-gen but new-gen, a new generation of “more innovative” consoles that allow new player experiences. More on that later.

The Good: Nintendo has a new Zelda and a new Mario game in the works… in theory. They’re releasing a Shaun White Snowboarding game with the Wii balance board and Animal Crossing for Wii, as well as the long-awaited Wii Music, which should have been a launch title. Animal Crossing looks great, and I’ve always loved the game. Still a complete rehash of the old game (think Ninja Gaiden Sigma but no nicer graphics) and still not enough connectivity, even if there is more (damn you, Friend Code!). But I’ll definitely want to see it at some point when it comes out. They have a Star Wars: Clone Wars, Rayman Rabbids TV Party and Call of Duty: World at War, as well, all three of which use the wiimote sensor in some fashion.

They had Guitar Hero: On Tour which is pretty much Guitar Hero toned down a hundred times and SPORE Creatures which is a Tamagotchi Pokemon Nintendogs Designer hybrid thing. There is another Pokemon game. There’s a Grand Theft Auto game on the DS, too, which is highly confusing as to how it’ll work, and we’ve seen no videos or screenshots.

They’re suggesting some eerie things about those temporary downloadable games for DS, like cookbooks and maps and information and things that generally belong on an iPhone.

There’s something interesting called WiiMotionPlus, which is an adapter which apparently makes your Wiimote more accurate. I see it a little like the Nintendo 64 expansion pack. The way it looks, it simply reads your wrist movements.

The Bad: E3 was an awful joke this year from Nintendo. Nintendo basically spent an entire conference talking about how great they were doing and how many people they’d gotten to buy their hardware, stating that their Mario and Zelda teams were “working on games for the Wii”, which could mean anything, and then proceeded to preview games we know will not live up to the hype they generate for their “Motion Sensitivity”.

The Wii balance board being used as a “board” for everything is already sounding old with both Shaun White and Raving Rabbids using it. We know Star Wars: Clone Wars is going to be a disappointment. We expected lightsabers and swords to do what we do when the Wiimote has been in our hands, but after Zelda: Twilight Princess and Red Steel I know this is a dream and not a reality. It’s not going to happen. Watching two people duking it out with lightsabers and having to waggle their wiimotes and nunchuks back and forth in order to escape a clash was immediate proof of that. Even with the new WiiMotionPlus, which looks like it has potential, but was demonstrated with Wii Sports, a severely toned-down game when it comes to calculation, graphics and content. I’m expecting disappointment. Which I’m pretty sure is impossible.

Same goes for Call of Duty: World of War. Have we all forgotten the catastrophe that was Call of Duty 3 on Wii? Is the fact that it has no number now supposed to mask that it is a predecessor of that lousy combination of bad mechanics and awful visuals? Watching people fake it out while they hold that stupid plastic Wii Shooter in their hands was painful. Come on, people. We know the only way this will work is with lock-on. Remember Prime: Corruption? Yeah, that’s the only way it’ll work. And I don’t think COD will do that. I’m expecting somewhat of a rail shooter experience, actually. And that sucks.

Lastly, what happened to Harvest Moon and Line Rider? What, were they just not good enough to be in E3? Instead, pushed aside for stuff like Wii Speak–a microphone. It’s almost as bad as Sony putting emphasis in the Eye Toy, a webcam. At least the Eye Toy can be used for a few motion-based games like Tori Emaki. In fact, the Eye Toy comes with a microphone. And yet they promote it like it’s delivered from on high.

Wii Music looks like a great idea that will simply not be as great as it looks. While I love being able to use virtual instruments to create music, Wii Music’s presentation just was not that impressive. I know they’ve been working on it for a long time, but even so it still looks flawed. Simply not accurate enough, not seamless enough, not melodious enough. The notes Miyamoto played, opposed to what Miyamoto claimed, really did not seem to match the song. Hitting the right drum on the set seemed more trouble than it was worth. Taking a leaf out of the indy DS game Jam Sessions would have been a great idea over the system they developed.

I obviously expect everything Nintendo to sell like pancakes. I expect people to be thrilled with the WiiMotionPlus. I expect Wii Music to be a bestseller that will kill at Christmas, with no other triple A children’s games being released other than Super Mario Sluggers (a baseball Mario game, surprise) and I know they’ll continue to lead the pack as everyone thinks they will. But I hate it. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of people assuming the Wiimote is “innovation,” that it’s new and different and special. It’s just another button. A more intuitive button? Maybe. Though all that does is get you more sales. The moment you make it this easy for someone to add motion sensitivity to a game, you’re no longer being innovative. You’re being a goddamn tool.

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I’m going to talk about the E3 conferences in order, starting with Microsoft today, Nintendo tomorrow and Sony the day after. I have good and bad things to say about each, and will be doing it in short blurbs.

The Good: Microsoft has things lined up for the future. Good–there’s a world outside Halo 3.

They’re changing their interface to look like Windows Media Center (which I have always hated… but it works similar to Sony’s XMB, so what do you do?) and they’re adding Avatars, which are like an answer to PS3′s Home avatars and Nintendo’s Miis, only resembling Miis a great deal more.

They’ve also got a good lineup of games, including Fable 2 of Peter Molyneaux fame and every other multiplatform game we already know about like Resident Evil and Rock Band 2. Exclusively, they have Gears of War 2 and a few Square-Enix-published games.

The Bad: I was no excited by Avatars at all. While I appreciate companies trying to represent players in a virtual environment and I’m looking forward to Home and everything, I’m starting to become frustrated that it’s becoming a gimmick to incorporate avatar representation. Hopefully Microsoft Avatars will be just as customizeable as Home avatars and will not be as static and bland as Miis have turned out to be.

I didn’t fail to notice the fact that they only had really two big-name exclusives on their lineup. Of the four Square games Microsoft boasted, only two (Star Ocean: The Last Hope and Infinite Undiscovery) will be exclusive–the other two being Last Remnant and Final Fantasy XIII–the latter announcement which I already expressed my disappointment in. Both exclusive games are only published by Square Enix, developed by tri-Ace.

Also, I feel this being more or less a confirmation of Microsoft’s less-than-honorable payoff to Square. It also details some of Sony’s sneak tactics, which I’ll elaborate on the day after tomorrow.

Lastly, why did they change their interface? I never thought there was an issue with it. I remember actual complaints about the PSN store being the reason it was changed–and to resemble Wii Channels, no less–but giving the Xbox that WMC XMB new interface is rather uncalled for.

Nintendo’s Good and Bad coming tomorrow.

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Yesterday, during the E3 Microsoft Keynote presentation, we heard Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix, give an announcement that broke millions of hearts.

Final Fantasy XIII no longer a PS3 exclusive. An Xbox 360 version will be released in Europe and North America on the same launch date as the PS3 version.

I think I’m justified in feeling terribly betrayed right now, since time and time again the world was assured that Final Fantasy XIII was to be a PS3 exclusive–the trailers had logos on the end that read “Exclusively for the Playstation 3 System”, the rumors were quelled time and time again, really–we all thought we could trust Square Enix. They have Sony’s back, we thought. Sony saved them when they were drowning after FFX-2 and Spirits Within. They gave them a huge chance with Kingdom Hearts–it’s the only reason they’ve been able to explode back up. And now this.

I can’t imagine the amount of money that must have exchanged hands for this to have occurred–Xbox 360 must have realized they didn’t have all that much in their 2008 lineup and called up Square Enix, begging for a slice of cake. I do, however, get the feeling Square won’t be having to merge with any other company anytime too soon.

To give some good news, Final Fantasy XIII Versus remains a PS3 exclusive, and XIII itself will of course still be released on the PS3. But Square has wounded me this time. I’ve been able to forgive and forget time and time again. But this? This is betrayal. I’ve been stabbed in the back. And not only me–I get the feeling Sony didn’t know about this announcement either. Nor any other Playstation advocate out there.

Square Enix, you’ve got to win back my respect and my approval. Both are gone for now. You have one more chance: make these two games so spectacular My eyes pop out, or become dead to me from here on out.

Let’s hope you make the right choice.

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