E3: Last year consoles; this year games

Stan Beer
Sunday, 08 July 2007 12:55

Your IT - Entertainment

It seems like such a short time since audiences and critics at the last E3 expo were marvelling at the "surprise hit" of the show, the Nintendo Wii, and sniping at Sony for its "overpriced", late to market PS3. As much as soon to be released hardware was the focus of 2006, games software will dominate 2007.

This year, Wii consoles are moving off shelves faster than retailers can stock them, the PS3 is selling sluggishly but picking up steam, and Microsoft is moving desperately to head off Xbox 360's quality control problems by digging into its deep pockets to keep game-buying consumers happy. With all three nextgen consoles out there, it seems fairly clear that this E3 will be all about games.

Only the Xbox 360, which is a year ahead of its two rivals in the market, has a half decent inventory of games to choose from already on store shelves. The hype surrounding the impending release in September of Halo 3 is amazing, so it's fair to assume that E3 will serve as a platform for Microsoft to further plug its new blockbuster. Will we also hear more about a firmer release date than "2008" for Gears of War 2?

Then of course there are a spate of Wii games set to come on the market in the next month or two, including the online Mario Strikers Charged, and shooters such as Alien Syndrome, Battalion Wand Brothers in Arms: Double Time. With the Wii threatening to wrest away the Xbox 360's mantle as the most widely sold nextgen console, older gamers will no doubt be interested to see if more exclusive titles of the quality of Red Steel are in the pipeline.

However, it is the high priced laggard of the nextgen group, PS3, that may provide the most interest as far as new games are concerned.There are literally scores of exclusive PS3 titles in the development pipeline. However, relatively few have firm release dates as yet. Gods of war III and Gran Turismo 5 are without release dates, as are a host of others such as Monster Hunter 3 and Wipeout HD. Still others have vague release dates such as sometime in 2008, while there are quite a few slated for release this year, including The Getaway 3 (October), Killzone 2 (Q407), Warhawk (sometime this year), Heavenly Sword (September 2007), among others.

Sony, smarting from the beating it's getting by Nintendo to date, has promised hundreds of games for its nextgen platform over the next 12 months. The company will no doubt be keen to whet the appetites of gamers with a plethora of previews of things to come at E3.

And to top things off, the latest installment of the non-exclusive kingpin of action games series, GTA IV is due to hit the market in October. Both Sony and Microsoft should be keen to give E3 attendees a taste of the long awaited Rock Star Games title on their respective platforms.

In addition, one would expect all three console manufacturers to plug the online gaming and non-gaming capabilities of their respective flagship consoles.

There has been some speculation that Sony and perhaps even Microsoft may use E3 as an opportunity to announce price drops for their consoles. However, that now seems unlikely, given the latest denials from Sony. The most likely scenario now is that Sony and Microsoft will keep their pricing powder dry for the Christmas shopping season.