My Takeaway from the E3 Press Events
So I just finished watching the Nintendo E3 press conference and, now having seen all the big press events, find myself a little unimpressed. Despite the big announcements, only a few things caught my attention. I’m just not a Gears of War/Assassin’s Creed-type of gamer, so there wasn’t a lot for me, but a few things caught my eye…
Love, love, love that Nintendo began with Zelda and even went so far as to mention a game for the DSi (the only one of the whole Nintendo press conference). Though certainly not a surprise, leading with a Zelda retrospective, focusing on the upcoming games and even featuring the music from the series may end up being my favorite moment of E3.
Looking back on yesterday, Microsoft is at E3 to talk about Kinect and they certainly have a lot to talk about. As a game controller, the Kinect does little for me, but the “Minority Report” controls are cool, and, hey, they finally found something to do with Bing! The games press are being a little hard on Microsoft’s event, which I thought was pretty good, and I was happy to see game-play from the Tomb Raider origin story.
Definitely respected EA’s straight-forward “here are our games, nothing more” presentation and wished Ubisoft would have followed suit. But Ubisoft did offer an unexpected, and for me the most exciting of the day, announcement — FarCry3 (I agree it’s “the surprise game of the show” according to Ubisoft). Loved FarCry2, and I’m blown away to see another! Looks good, too.
Though Sony’s press conference was a little too Move heavy, the mea culpa at the beginning was admirable. The new PSVita (no comment on the name, but then again WiiU?) looks very attractive at $249, and will be even more attractive if Sony provides a way to get some of the best PSP titles on it at launch. (Monster Hunter Vita, please?)
However, the WiiU, despite the academic sounding name, is the most exciting hardware news of the show, and will, very likely, be my primary console in 2013, especially if publishers like EA are on board day one. It’s not even the gameplay elements that excite me. The WiiU controller offers a new way to interact with an entire platform, and if Nintendo follows through on the backwards compatibility promised in their press conference, it could really be a game changer… a practical peripheral, for a change.
Oh, and Layton 4 is definitely coming to America this fall, but still no word on London Life. C’mon, Nintendo, remember your DS base here!
