misterd said:
I think you are underestimating the affection people have for those Nintendo franchises. It certainly can't win E3 with one or two such announcements, but announce a bunch of them, especially if one or more are new IPs, and one is BIG - ala Zelda using the 1:1 controller? Not saying it'd be easy, but doable, if the list was long enough and, more importantly, they showed truly impressive gameplay footage (ie a new Zelda couldn't look like Ocarina, part 3). I think many people are overlooking just how workmanlike the MS conference was prior to the FF Megaton. No question at all the FF Megaton will be next to impossible to top as the single biggest moment of the conference, but that's one game, maybe 2 years away. MS did a decent job - it secured its areas of strength (shooters, online), made a clumsy but not completely embarassing attempt to reach the Wii audience, and had one massive surprise. All in all, I'd give them good but beatable B or B-, but without FF13, it would have been a full letter grade lower. It won't be very hard for Nintendo or Sony to whip out a presentation able to out *wow* the first 95% of the MS conference (or were you really moved by avatars and Lips?). I think, in the end, the company that will be declared victor will be the one that leaves the most people excited for what's coming in the next year. If Sony or Nintendo can put together a presentation that is more solid and entertaing from beginning to end, they can beat MS, no question. That said, someone usually flops each year. It doesn't appear to be Microsoft. That means either Sony or Nintend fans are going to be very disappointed, or gamers will be looking at one of the better E3s in a long while (at least in terms of presentation). |
We just differ in our views of how to win E3 is all. I think winning E3 comes down to dopping these megatons like FF XIII, because E3 has always been about the giant shock value of seeing something unexpected. As the years pass, what would you take from this year's E3? Thinking back five years to 2004, there's only one thing I remember even happening, and that's the Twilight Princess trailer. This FF XIII announcement is like that but magnified, because not only did nobody predict this could be on a Microsoft console, but to boot it was a direct strike at Sony, and totally diminished their entire conference in one fell swoop. Just look at this site and see all of the crushed PS3 owners, the retractors that are now going 360 and the way almost every site couldn't hold the traffic and crashed. Five years from now we will still remember this happening, and I think by then we won't quite remember any expected game that got announced or shown, for instance God of War III and Pikmin 3, no matter how good they look.
If we judge just by how big an increase in sales E3's announcements bring, we may as well just give the winning crown to Sony now as Nintendo can't see an increase unless production gets increased, and Microsoft isn't really expanding at all with their conference.
Tag: Became a freaking mod and a complete douche, coincidentally, at the same time.
