Along with some developer comment. Definitely shaping up to be a worthy successor to the System Shock throne. Gameplay seems diverse and open, at least as far as individual battles go. The gameplay seems a bit “tunnelled” and linear, but so was Half-Life 2 and it was a blast.
Posts Tagged e3
BioShock E3 gameplay video
Jul 18
Burnout Paradise E3 footage
Jul 13
About that other console genre that I love: Racing…
E3 is always a fountain of sensory overload. Too many games for my mind to wrap itself around.
In a move everyone could predict, Sony swallowed their pride and finally dropped the price of the PS3 to $500. Just a bit higher than the most expensive Xbox360 package. This move should increase their sales somewhat, but as usual, they are making broad, boastful claims about it:
“Our initial expectation is that sales should double at a minimum,” Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said in an interview.
Well, whatever. But I guess they figured it was safe to lose some money per console, as Microsoft dropped the big bombshell of extending everyone’s warranty on the XBOX360, costing them over a billion dollars, last week. Plus, Sony doesn’t exactly like being ignored at E3, which starts in a few days.
And the Wii, well you still can’t even find it in stores. Keep on truckin’.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo is a gathering which started off small and kinda gimmicky in 1995, and has since grown into the biggest and most anticipated showing of future and present games in the whole industry. Now, the board of directors announced plans to scale it back, spread it out to several hotels, burn it down, and let it sink into the swamp.
This is rather a shock, as E3 brings huge press and huge money not only to the gaming industry, but to LA in general. This is not just a sign of the massive growth of the gaming industry, but it is also one of the causes. The hype built from it is enough to sell millions of games with just a few screenshots and rendered video.
I guess that is good and bad. As, from the very beginning, the Expo has been about hype. Hype is often misguided or misplaced. It can draw attention to games that are flops before they are ever released, and it can draw needed attention away from small-time developers with new and innovative ideas, but not as much marketing money. Many developers eschew sending much of an entourage or display for the event because they simply can’t justify the ever increasing costs.
I think there were rumblings of this over the last few years, as they started to crack down on use of “Booth Babes” and overbearing displays.
Game demos, movies, and sneak previews have exploded in the years of E3, and much good press and live demonstrations have come out of the event over the years. From what they are now saying, they want to improve the business environment while not making it entirely boring. While I can respect that, and it could definitely help smaller companies, they may be overestimating their influence. Changing formats in mid-stream could lead to killing hype for the event, which would, in turn, result in an obsolete event.
E3 could be usurped by the Game Developers Conference, that builds a little more steam every year. While they focus on different things, the GDC can easily swing into E3 territory.
