E3 Ramblings

I was sick last weekend and into Monday, Tuesday… so I actually got to catch a few E3 press conferences live. (This had nothing to do with sick, seriously. Maybe Tuesday… a little). I missed the Microsoft show only realizing after it was over that IGN was broadcasting these things, but I did catch Sony and Nintendo’s shows.

Sony started off humbly apologizing for the PSN outage. They didn’t dwell on it much, but I am kind of curious what would have been said if PSN hadn’t been brought back up just a week earlier. Then they moved on to Uncharted 3 which is supposed to be like the greatest series ever, I’m about an hour into Uncharted so I was like ‘Pretty, get to the NGP’. They went into Resistance 3 though and the demo actually looked kinda lame. That transitioned into the introduction of a bundle coming out including Resistance 3, an HDMI cable and a 24” 3D TV for $500.00. Now this gave me pause. I’m not all that interested in R3, but $500 seems very reasonable to get 3D ready. I ultimately decided I didn’t want to go down from my 32'” set, but this is a great deal for anyone not needing (wanting) a larger screen.

Sony shifted to plugging Move a bit making me yawn. Finally, they brought out the little guy everyone was there to see, the PlayStation Vita… Yes, Vita. Wait, what? Let’s all agree to call this thing PSV and move on. I was a little annoyed by the boo’s at the AT&T announcement (I work for AT&T), but haters gonna hate. A lot of time was spent demoing Uncharted on PSV showing how you can use the touch screen or motion controls to make jumps and scurry around ledges. They also showed you can use this new fangled invention called ‘buttons’ to do the same, not sure how well that will work out. Some other games were shown, over all impression I got was ‘badass, when’s it come out’.

Also announced was pricing: $250 for WiFi only and $300 for 3G enabled. The general consensus seems to be ‘screw AT&T, I will not get a contract’. While I  personally agree with the no contract thing, most likely it’ll be completely prepaid. A one time extra $50 for the option has me leaning towards the 3G option.

The next day Nintendo had their show. They started off with a few Zelda announcement in regard to it’s 25th anniversary. From there to a  few 3DS game announcements including a new Starfox (can I stop hearing about this now), Luigi’s Mansion 2 and… some other stuff. Nothing’s really made me feel to the need to own this thing yet.

Finally the big reveal and Nintendo announce the WiiU! I think I actually said out loud ‘Seriously?’. Apparently they were because they had slides and everything with ‘WiiU’ on it. The Big N didn’t actually show the system itself, it’s design apparently hasn’t been finalized, but much was made of the controller. It looks like a standard current gen controller with all the required analog sticks, buttons and triggers, with half an iPad slapped in the center. Looks huge and a pain to use for extended periods (though hands on people at E3 seem to be reporting it’s not that bad). The big surprise though, not the WiiU itself, was the fact that Nintendo has *drum roll* … 3rd party support! They had a whole video of people not from Nintendo talking about how excited they were to work on the new system. We’ll see how sales go when Arkham City and Darksiders 2 come out on all 3 systems.

Other musings:

• If Blizzard doesn’t hurry up Torchlight II may out Diablo, Diablo III
• Arkham City appears to be drool worthy
• Kobe fumbling around with Move was funny, on screen Lakers were getting beat by the Heat
• Dust integrated with EVE Online seems interesting
• Street Fighter X Tekken is coming to PS3 AND PSV, with exclusive Cole from inFamous