E3 2008 – Nintendo Press Conference Summary

E3 2008

This morning Nintendo held their press conference and amongst all the smiles there were several interesting tidbits.

• Animal Crossing: City Folks was confirmed for the Wii with the Wii Speak feature announced. It will allow you to gather and chat with your friends in game while you partake in activities like fishing. The features sounds fun and the game looks really nice.

• One of the big announcements at the conference was the Wii Motion Plus, which is a somewhat small square piece of hardware that you plug in the back of your Wiimote and enhances the sensitivity of the sensors. It looks quite promising but we’ll have the wait for more tests to be sure.

• The release date of November 2 2008 for Pokemon Ranger on DS was announced and GTA Chinatown Wars was announced also for the DS (but no release date).

• Wii Sports Resort was announced as well as Wii Music. Sports looks like an extension of the original so nothing special. Wii Music on the other hand looks interesting. In Miyamoto fashion it seems very intuitive and you basically just press buttons any way you want to produce seemingly pre-recorded music. While it looks fun and easy to use, the novelty effect might wear off quickly if the music database is lacking so we’ll wait for more details.

All in all, I thought the Nintendo conference was a bit underwhelming. No big announcement (where is Kid Icarus??). There were a few forced joked which fell flat and a few uneasy silent after “big” announcements (like in the Microsoft Conference). Hopefully the Wiimote extension, Animal Crossing and Wii Music will deliver.

You can watch the full coverage of the conference here.

E3 2008 – Microsoft Press Conference Summary

E3 2008

Today Microsoft held their press conference at E3 and is what I took from it.

• Complete revamp of Xbox Live with avatars. at first glance I’m not sure about the changes but we will have to see it and try it to make sure.

• Netflix is partnering with Microsoft to distribute movies on Xbox Live. To me this is THE announcement that’s worth a million bucks.Combining the cheap format of Netflix with the (almost) instantaneous aspect of Live download is a gold mine.

• The Fallout 3 gameplay felt very underwhelming to me. I’m pretty disappointed as I have high hopes for this game. We’ll have to wait and see some more.

• Final Fantasy XIII will be released simultaneously for PS3 and 360! Now this is another major gain for Microsoft and another blow to the PS3. Sony must be really glad they integrated Blu-ray in their console because otherwise…

• The online Co-Op modes for Resident Evil 5 (releasing Friday the 13th March 2009) and Fable II look very nice. Fable II gives a lot of promise and looks like another nice RPG that people will enjoy playing. Resident Evil 5 continues in the footsteps of RE 4 adding a promising cooperation mode.

• Confirmed release dates of November 7 2008 for Gears of War 2, March 13 2009 for Resident Evil 5, October 2008 for Fable II and September 2 2008 for Infinite Undiscovery (which looks like Lost Odyssey but has a kick-ass website).

• Other announcements counted Guitar Hero World Tour which looked OK but was overshadowed by Rock Band 2 and their announcement that AC/DC will finally be featured on the game. Rare confirmed Viva Piñata 2 and Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Geometry Wars 2 and Portal 2 are coming to Xbox Live Arcade and a few other details which weren’t that thrilling.

Overall the Microsoft conference was average with mostly confirmations and footage we had seen before. Still it included the big FFXIII slap and some nice new footage of Fable II, Resident Evil 5 and Fallout 3.

You can watch the full coverage of the conference here.

New BioWare Franchise Revealed!

With E3 2008 kicking up in full gear. BioWare released their new franchise, Dragon Age: Origins with a trailer that was released during GameTrailers TV on Spike TV.

All I can say is I wasn’t very impressed with the trailer. It is too short to show much so I will wait to see more.
Reminded me of the battle of Helm’s Deep for some reason.