E3 2006: The Final Word

Now that E3 is over, it's time for a quick wrap up. Having followed the various newsfeeds on Google News it looks as though the consensus appears to be in favor of Nintendo as the winner of the E3 PR wars (the number one place to generate hype before the launch--or at least without spending millions/billions on advertising and product placement)--this is even more evidenced by Googling "Sony E3 2006" where at least 3 of the top 10 are actually related to Nintendo. That's a pretty impressive feat, especially considering Sony is known as the master of hype and PR in the game industry--which is a big part of how they built the Playstation brand name. So let's quickly go over what all 3 of the big players did right and what they did wrong:

Sony: A lot of analysts say Sony's big blunder this E3 was the price. I both agree and disagree. While, yes the price is high (and $100+ more than their competitors--depending upon how you compare the price w/ the 360) it is not at all unexpected. Most analysts had been predicting the price to come in around $500, which it is if you don't mind not having HDMI (which few TVs currently support) and don't need the larger harddrive/builtin wireless (presumably you'll be able to add wireless to it later using a the USB ports). That's not to say I have no problem with the price--I would never pay $500 for a video game system, but then I would also never pay $400 either. I'd consider $300, but I'd probably still opt to wait until the prices fell. But I digress. Sony's big mistake was not the price--it was expected because of their decision to try to force Blu-ray down the throats of consumers (which was a big mistake, but wasn't really an E3 2006 mistake). No, their big mistake was not having anything impressive enough to seperate it from the competition. Reports stated that the graphics were marginally better (if that) than those of the XBox 360 and they didn't have playable versions of their biggest fist and third party franchises--just movies. In other words, they had nothing to JUSTIFY the extra cost as the games community as a whole seems to be fairly indifferent toward BOTH high definition formats at the moment (taking a let them fight it out and then buy the winner approach). But again, to be fair, in Japan the PS2 launch lacked many must buy games and people bought it as the least expensive DVD player on the market at the time. In the early stages of the game, the importance is in getting as many units into consumers hands as possible as quickly as possible as developers and publish will favor whichever system has the largest market share (even if part of that market share isn't using the system for games).

Microsoft: The Live Anywhere was a fairly brilliant move, but as you read in my previous post I question the usefulness of it unless gamers suddenly clamor to pay $150+ to upgrade/buy a copy of Windows Vista (along with the $300-400 for an XBox 360). A smart move would be to offer Vista licenses at a discount to 360 owners as that will help the adoption rate of Vista along with increasing the support for the 360. However, no such plans were announced. Microsoft's biggest blunder was not having Halo 3 ready at time for the PS3 launch. Gears of War is cool and all, but to many it's just a shooter to hold them over until Halo 3. The other (continuing) big blunder is not having a wider variety of titles--the 360 is great if you like sports, racing, and shooting games... but beyond that, many gamers find it fairly lacking... There are other genres on it, don't get me wrong, but none of the games in those other genres have been very good for the 360. If Microsoft can't get the 3rd party support, maybe they should look into some more acquisitions...

Nintendo: While on the surface they appeared to do flawlessly with most press reports saying that the uniqueness of the gameplay and the variety and pure fun factor of the games more than makes up for the slightly less "pretty" graphics, Nintendo did make a couple of major mistakes. Here's their biggest mistake: where are the online titles? Nothing was mentioned specifically about any game having an online component, there was speculation about Red Steel and it was previously rumored that Super Smash Bros. would be online (although in the press conference announcing the game, the developer's response about online support was fairly cryptic...) Online gaming made it big in the last generation and Nintendo had very little to show for it. I think it would be a huge mistake to wait any more than 6 months after launch to roll out their online gaming platform. The other possible weak link in their armor may be the fact that none of their demoes were "optimized" yet and several conference goers stated that there were some technical issues with the controller interacting with the games. This probably isn't a huge issue as with any new technology one expects such hiccups, but it still leaves one questioning how well the controller actually works--especially considering it looks like the new Super Smash Bros. won't be utilizing it. Still, overall they appeared to do very well, and honestly this is the only system I'll be buying at launch (even if I have to camp out over night to get one...)