E3 Hype thread!!!! Come one, come all!

[super_etecoon]

I think we have every reason to be hyped for this E3. Certainly we are going to see some hardware reveals. Those are always exciting. Nintendo has two new consoles on the market and I'm sure they have plenty in store for us for both. I also expect to see a lot of games that can be played on either console, not the least of which will be Super Smash Bros.

Retro is actually in a bit of a tight spot. Having missed last year's big show the hype train they're riding could derail into internet scorn if the title isn't exactly what we're all looking for. Granted, the final product they release will ultimately be a great piece of software, but E3 is rarely about software and more about the idea of the software. I for one will be a bit let down if the game they are working on is either Donkey Kong Country 2 or a Star Fox title. For that reason I will curb my enthusiasm.

While the early indicators for the WiiU are that they are courting the more core market, I'm sure there are powerful people within who champion the idea that the path to profitability lies within the casual market. Nintendo has a knack for striking in places where others don't see profits or innovation, so I wouldn't be surprised to see some left-field piece of software or peripheral designed to pull in the ever fickle and ADD prone casuals. Yet another reason to curb my enthusiasm.

Sadly, I feel that my heyday of gaming on non-Nintendo consoles disappeared with this last generation. Gamemakers are targeting the wallets of testosterone-crazed men who honestly wouldn't have been caught dead gaming before they found out you could simulate murder and brutality while lobbing emasculating epithets at little kids across the world. It's a bully's paradise now, which is shocking, since gaming once was the hobby of kids and nerds. So for the fare to come out of the HDtwins, my enthusiams hasn't been curbed, but rather curb-stomped.

So it is with some trepidation that I am excited about this year's E3. The console business is on shaky ground and each of the remaining players will be fighting for that last little bit of the ship to stand on before it continues its sinking trajectory into irrelevance. At a time when each should be embracing the other, instead we will claim that gaming itself is not worth fighting for if the results do not create the perfect world in which we wish to game. Certainly I myself am guilty of this behavior, as I long for the day when color and wonder will return to the gaming landscape. I don't want a gaming world that mimics the real world and gives me the tools and abilities to act out sick, violent fantasies. I want a wacky, whimisical world that makes me feel like I've woken up in a dream inspired by Tim Burton or Pixar that encourages me to play and explore, not the darkness within myself, but the light within this ficticious, mesmerizing dreamscape.

This isn't the response I prepared to give this thread, nor is it probably the appopriate thread for such response, but it's what I feel about the future of gaming. And if E3 isn't about the future of gaming I don't know what is.