Even the thrill of the LA Lakers winning the NBA Championship couldn’t overshadow the excitement, elation, fatigue, and overall explosion of conversation about the wrap-up of E3 2010 today. If the conversation on Twitter is any indication, this was the best E3 yet. Everyone from first-timers to battle-hardened industry veterans were saying the same thing—Amazing show.
I know I’ve beaten this drum before, but this is a great time to be a gamer. The technology has evolved to a point where people can create really good art with it, but the science behind the art hasn’t stopped either. Companies are continually pushing the envelope to find ways to deliver new experiences and new ideas to us, and they are succeeding. Despite the feeling that Kinect and PlayStation Move are more of the same, or “done already”, they still represent different ways to experience video games. Sure the Move may be a Wii ripoff, but since the PlayStation 3 is so much more powerful than the Wii ever can be, there will be things that were never thought possible coming to the world of motion control. Sure, the first crop of Kinect-enabled games that were shown by Microsoft were goofy sports and waggle games, but the technology is new and untested. Having your console be able to recognize you as an entity opens up innumerable doors of possibility.
Today’s Twitter buzz was still extremely Nintendo-heavy. As people got over their fear of lines, they waited for hours to play with a 3DS and any of the new generation of Wii titles. They came away absolutely thrilled with the 3DS and in hundreds and hundreds of Tweets, over three days of the show, I did not see one single negative comment about the 3Ds. That cements, at least in my mind, Nintendo’s firm grasp on form, execution, and the joy of gaming. They were the clear winners of the show.
I didn’t see any Move buzz today at all. People were talking quite a bit about how good Killzone 3 looks, however. Excitement is high for that and Twisted Metal. It feels as if Move has almost already flopped.
On the Microsoft front, Kinect wasn’t much of a factor either; people are quite polarized about it, however. I was seeing either things like, “Kinect sucks. Highly disappointed”, or “Kinect is astonishing.”
As we close out another year of E3, it leaves me to reflect on the way this conference was covered. Certainly, it is incredibly important to be there in Los Angeles, rubbing elbows with peers and developers, fans and booth babes, but it is also becoming critically important to follow the happenings on the real-time web. There is no possible way to be everywhere at once, but with tools like Twitter, you can at least see what everyone is saying everywhere, all at once.
It’s been fun covering the show from the comfort of my office here in Detroit. Yes, I wish I could have gone, but honestly, following the show on Twitter was the next best thing. See you next year!
Articles RSS