Tag Archives: Sony

Games, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox

E3 Conference Review

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Microsoft – Only showing games to be released this year was an interesting gimmick, but ultimately I felt that it was a mistake. It did a great job of showing off the 2007 release list for the 360 which is, in my opinion, by far the best of the three consoles, only to leave 2008 and beyond as something of a vacuum that left the door open for the other two to take the plaudits. The likes of MGS4 aren’t coming out this year but they still carry a lot of weight as franchises.

And why did Microsoft choose to show only their 2007 titles and then show Resi 5 anyway? Why not just show other future titles and plug the strength of the 2007 lineup? They could easily have had their cake and eaten it.

The show itself fairly poor until it was saved by some excellent gameplay footage of big games like Call of Duty 4 (plus online beta!) and Assassin’s Creed. I’m still as hot for Halo 3 as I ever was after that trailer, as well, although it was admittedly not a brilliant trailer. It’s just that they played it safe, had their aforementioned high points, a couple of low points (the Madden thing was…ugh), and came out just affirming what we already knew: that the Xbox 360 has a strong 2007 lineup. They need a huge X07 or TGS now.

Overall: C+

Nintendo – I don’t doubt that every mainstream outlet on the planet is writing glowing features on Wii Fit as we speak and it’s going to make ridiculous amounts of money, but that show was a lesson in how to alienate your hardcore fans. I’m admittedly a lapsed Nintendo fan and a Mario game doesn’t do it for me like it used to (I’ll still buy Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 for sure, though), but nothing there did it for me. What was there except Wii Fitness and half a dozen new Wii peripherals? Vision Training? Not even any big DS announcements!

Mario Kart? It looks the same as Double Dash and they already did it online on the DS. No Animal Crossing. Little new on Smash Bros except a release date met with dead silence. The focus on Wii Fit meant that it ended up coming off like an infomercial for a step machine like you get on Five US when CSI isn’t on, and just affirmed for me that Nintendo and the Wii is no longer going with what I, as a gamer, want.

Overall: D

Sony – Mainly given the advantage of following Nintendo’s show and having only to be better than last year, Sony only really had to show some games that weren’t coming out this year in order to ‘win’, and they did. It started badly with some cringe-worthy Home skits and a painful appearance by Chewbacca, as well as so many plugs that it felt like I was watching Casino Royale again (“Spider-Man 2, now available on Blu-ray Disc, DVD, and UMD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment”; “connect your PSP to your Sony Bravia flatscreen TV”; “Home on my Sony-Ericsson mobile phone”), but then it was uphill.

The new PSP is a good improvement even if it didn’t have internal memory (I’ll buy one when it gets hacked), Echochrome looks cool, and MGS4, Uncharted, and Killzone all look superb. For the first time since E3 2005 I’m seriously considering when I plan to buy a PS3 and which game is going to do it.

Overall: B+

Overall, though, I think we can all agree that the new E3 is a disappointment for those of us who like to sit back and enjoy the show. Bring back the old one, I say!

Games, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox

E3 Predictions 2007

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Even if the big show isn’t the same as it used to be (I miss it already), that doesn’t mean that the big companies aren’t up to their old tricks. This is what my money’s on the big three announcing at their conferences – which start with Microsoft’s a fortnight today – along with a few outside bets.

Microsoft

  • $100/£80 price drop across all SKUs.
  • Halo 3 campaign demo, hopefully closer to the real thing than last time.
  • Ninja Gaiden 2. I then spend an hour trying to clean up the mess I made.
  • Some real PGR4 and Fable 2 video.
  • Rare bringing back one of their classics (I don’t think it’ll be Killer Instinct, for the record).
  • At least one current PS3 exclusive coming to 360.
  • Shenmue III. Please? If enough of us believe they’ll have to do it.

Nintendo

  • Lots and lots and lots of sales graphs.
  • Animal Crossing Wii shown and it’ll be a kind of walled-garden MMO: you live in your town with friends over the net, using WiiConnect24 to let anyone mess around in the persistent town at any time. Ban this sick burglary simulator!
  • Mario Kart Wii.
  • More Smash Bros shown, with a new feature that we haven’t seen. I’ll be upset if the Ouendan team isn’t in it. Sonic finally making it in is an outside bet.
  • A new console for the Virtual Console. Neo-Geo?
  • Miyamoto waves something around and Reggie has a new line for the fanboys to run into the ground for the next year.

Sony

  • Absolutely no sales graphs whatsoever.
  • $100/£75 off PS3.
  • PSP redesign.
  • Killzone 2 is finally shown and looks very good, albeit no E3 05 trailer.
  • Home and LBP. Lots of comparisons to MySpace put me off it even more.
  • Sony ruins their palindrome with the announcement of the force feedback Sixaxis. Shockaxis?

Any thoughts or predictions of your own are, of course, welcome.

Games, PlayStation, Tech

RIP Lik-Sang

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Remember those days when your only choice for getting an import game was the local independent and the prospect of paying £100 for it? Or a questionable mail order company in the back of CVG that may or may not fold before the next issue? Then the Internet came along and we could get all the cheap imports and dirt cheap accessories we wanted from Hong Kong outlets, and it was good.

As you may or may not know, possibly the biggest of these Hong Kong retailers, Lik-Sang, has today announced in a surprisingly ironic statement that it’s closing down as a result of repeated Sony lawsuits against it. The most recent one, which I wrote about in my last post, ended in a ruling that the importing of PSPs into the EU before the official release had been illegal and, by association, that importing the PS3 would be as well.

“Today is Sony Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe’s ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don’t see fit. It’s the beginning of the end… of the World as we know it”, stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com.

“Blame it on Sony. That’s the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally ‘won’, few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today.”

Well, fuck them. Really, fuck them. I’d never once used Lik-Sang to buy a Sony product but had bought countless cheap gadgets (most recently my £10 component switcher) that are difficult to find elsewhere. Now that’s gone because Sony wants to attack consumer choice for when they decide that they don’t like paying more for a late product. I don’t, didn’t buy a UK PSP, and also won’t buy a UK PS3.

This is a sad day. I hope this pisses off enough gamers to really come back and bite them.