Mike Bantick
Thursday, 17 July 2008 17:50
Opinion and Analysis
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Over the last couple of days the big names in interactive electronic entertainment, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have lifted the veil on their suite of upcoming directions. Let’s check the keynote report card and decide on who got the nod as king of keynote E3 2008.
Generally speaking, though the presentations were the usual, loud and bright, this years keynote addresse’s were somewhat ho-hum in content.
In many ways the companies fell into their niche modes quite nicely – though promising not to abandon the core gamers, Nintendo gave us the expected family orientated content, Sony talked about the future whilst still highlighting the good ole PS2 workhorse and Microsoft tried to please both camps.
Judging each companies content by originality, smarts and wow factor, the following is my synthesised opinion and E3 report card.
First up the
Microsoft offering from a couple of days ago.
Synopsis: A New 60GB Xbox 360 at the price of the 20GB model.
Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3 extra content
A new deal with Netflix and film/tv studios for download content.
Some dodgy (In the Movies) and not so dodgy (Lips) party games.
Bungie muted on any Halo type announcement.
A revamp of the Xbox 360 Dashboard – Vista style with Mii's,, Ooops 3D Avatars and a my integrated Party Experience.
A bunch of lured former rival platform franchises aimed at luring a larger chunk of the Japanese Market.
The big M scores low for Originality, effectively attempting to ride the coat-tails of their peers, looking for a piece of both the party game action and (granted, Microsoft started it) aiming for those that love to grab some video on demand.
5/10
In the Smarts category, Microsoft are still doing well, there library of games, though still leaning towards the hardcore is second to none, and has been enhanced, even minus the Bungie Halo content yet to come. Timing of the Dashboard update is pretty smack on the money as well
8/10
In the Wow stakes, there were not too many surprises with the Microsoft offering, much had been leaked prior to E3, but seeing the manifestation of the new Dashboard, the deal with Netflix (North America only), Gears of War 2, Fallout 3 and Lips content snazzed things up. The deflation of Wow, no Bungie announcement.
7/10
Microsoft Total 20/30
Next Up Nintendo.
