Winner: 360 owners who like RPGs.
Loser: E3.
Nintendo, my pre-show fave, did what was expected and nothing more. After Wii Sports and Wii Fit winning the show the last two years, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Music and Animal Crossing City Folk don't hold up. Nintendo obviously knew this, or they would have made one of the three the centerpiece.
Sony's big reveals were GoW3 and a 256 player online shooter? For people who aren't already GoW fans or online shooter fans, this does nothing.
MS had the biggest shock moment, but a non-exclusive hardly stands up to some past E3 moments. And everything else was pretty much as expected, minus the non-existant Xmote.
Overall, it just feels like E3 2008 was not an important event. Nintendo is spreading out it's new game info now, and seemed to decide E3 was only for their very top sales potential games. And Sony and MS announce their games so early its hard for either something we've known about for years, or things that are still years away, to be a showstopper.
At least so far; maybe they'll be more on the show floor or behind closed doors. But I'm not holding my breath...
"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.
