So, E3 2010, good eh? Wasn’t it?

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the right question, of course it was good it was a big huge gaming expo after all. The question I’m searching for should be was it disappointing? Even that doesn’t seem quite right, how can loads of great games being shown off disappoint?! How about… did it meet your expectations?

Each year I bemoan my inability to head off to LA and take in the spectacle that is E3. Not because I want to go networking with industry types but because I want to experience the utter madness of the launch events and be surrounded by the not-yet-released and newly announced games. But that is where my expectations would have sadly been left a little wanting this year.

There’s no denying the raft of spectacular and must have games that were on show this year. Fallout: New Vegas, Halo: Reach, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, Fable III, Medal of Honor, Gears of War 3, Dead Rising 2, Brink, Crackdown 2, and Call of Duty: Black Ops to name but a few(!) of those I am looking forward to.

Now read that list of games again. You’ve heard of them all haven’t you?

There in lies the problem. Almost every game or piece of hardware on show was already firmly on my radar. It was great to see new trailers and find out more information on Title-X but I really wanted something unexpected to wow me. I understand in an age of leaks and online journalism it is pretty difficult to keep things secret for long but still. The only titles I wasn’t aware of pre-E3 were the new Silent Hill game and NeverDead, both from Konami. No doubt there were more but none within my scope of interest. And I suspect these too were probably already known to many just that I hadn’t stumbled across them!

The same can be said of the new hardware announcements. Nothing I didn’t already have some degree of awareness about. Nintendo’s 3DS came close, I knew and had heard very little on it. Once again it appears Nintendo have got it right – introducing 3D to their already successful and established platform but ultimately keeping it simple and, more importantly, fun. Now for the obvious. I can’t talk about E3 without mentioning Kinect and Move. I have little interest in Move so more or less skimmed anything from Sony on the subject. Being an Xbox fan I was much more interested in Kinect and there’s nobody who can say it isn’t an impressive piece of kit. Technically it blows the competition clean out of the water but to be honest it’s big Cirque de Soleil showcase and subsequent presser left me feeling rather flat about the whole thing. Last year it was positioned as a real game changer, literally, with far reaching implications and possibilities. Nobody saw it coming, it was genius. Fast forward 12 months. After a very long build up the result was rather anti-climactic. The problem was too much was revealed the first time around. All that was left to show this year was an unfortunate name change, a new form factor not a million miles away from the dev kit and the games you’re going to be playing on it. None too surpassingly these were nothing we hadn’t seen before on the Wii which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Even the announcement of a new ‘slim’ Xbox wasn’t enough to appease me (it didn’t help that I’d bought an new Super Elite only 6 weeks ago). Again, the rumours had been circulating for a while and really took the wind out of the sails when it was officially announced.

Ultimately there might not have been any real stand-out revelations but when you have so many talented developers and great publishers flooding the market with fantastic games you’re never really going to get a ‘disappointing’ E3. I may have been left a little underwhelmed overall but I’ll take solace in the many great games I’ve got to look forward to in the next 18 months, and if anybody would like to take me to E3 2011 then by all means do!

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Originally named Project Natal, Kinect is an upcoming motion control peripheral that requires no controller. It tracks your body movements allowing you to interact with games directly and was touted as being able to do a lot more than the Wii. Basically, Microsoft is jumping on the motion control train (and Sony seems to be following suit with Move) in order to grab a slice of the Nintendo pie. It makes sense, of course. Nintendo have shown that there is a lot of money to be made in the casual gaming market and any business would have to be very myopic to turn a blind eye to that.  Microsoft want in. They want some of those brand new casual gamers playing on their console and in order to do that they’ve come up with Kinect. I don’t think it’s going to work out.

It should be remembered that when Nintendo started marketing the Wii they moved into a blue ocean of opportunity where there was no competition. Whilst Microsoft and Sony were focusing on the more hardcore gaming crowd with the 360 and the PS3, Nintendo struck out to attract a brand new audience who had perhaps never been interested in gaming before. It resulted in the Wii selling millions. It also resulted in a lot of gamers who prefer a larger amount of depth and complexity in their games buying a 360 or PS3 instead of a Wii. If Microsoft want to sell to the more causal crowd they will be mostly be competing with Nintendo for customers rather than attracting brand new ones. They will have to convince them that Kinect is worth spending money on; which could end up being pretty expensive if the customer doesn’t already own a 360. They will probably have to convince them that they need Kinect even though it is probable they already own a Wii. Most importantly of all, they are going to have to convince them that the Kinect can provide a different sort of entertainment than the Wii.

Ingenuity. That’s what helped bring so much of the Wii’s success. Unfortunately, it seems to be lacking on Kinect. For every popular Nintendo title then Kinect has an answer. If you enjoy playing Mario Kart, why not have a go on Joyride? If you like using Wii Fit for exercise then give Your Shape a try! And it goes on – the answer to Just Dance is Dance Central, to Wii Sports is Kinect Sports, to Wii Sports Resort is Kinect Adventures. They’ve even got a giant tiger/kitten pet simulator called Kinectimals which is very, very reminiscent of Nintendogs. Nintendogs was released in 2005. Have there really been no original ideas since then? Do Microsoft believe that the controller free technology on Kinect is enough to push these games onto customers who are likely to already own similar games? Maybe they do and maybe they are right. Maybe they plan to make games in the future that really push the limits of motion control with new and interesting ideas. At the moment, I wouldn’t bet any money on it.

There is only one sure-fire way to create new gaming audiences and to put consoles in the hands of people who may not have wanted one previously – innovation. An audience normally doesn’t know what it wants until you invent it and tell them so – something Nintendo did very well with the Wii. To be fair, innovation is hard to do and it is easier to try and jump on a bandwagon for an audience that has already been proven to exist. Kinect is playing it safe by chasing Ninentdo’s casual gamer but it is unlikely to reap the grand rewards that Microsoft is hoping for.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.