E3 Day 0 and 1: Press Conferences

Good evening, all, and welcome to the beginning of my special couch-bound coverage this year's E3 convention.

No, sadly I'm not attending the proceedings in Los Angeles this week (neither are the rest of our crew, Chris "The Gamerologist" and Nick "The Walls"), though we'll have to rectify that in the future. But, thanks to the power of the interwebs, all of the big events and presentations are available by live-stream on any number of websites, from G4 to GameTrailers to IGN and of course the respective sites of the companies themselves.

Being a workin' man, I couldn't rightly sit and watch the early press conferences at my desk (unfortunately). But I did follow the live blogging of a number of sites, and at least three dozen Twitter feeds that posted the same thing one after the other. It was quite an interesting day, and surely a testament to the role of social media in the gaming space.

But, let's get to the conferences:

Microsoft

Who didn't see that coming?

As you'd expect, Microsoft led off with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, tossed in a lot of Kinect (including support for Mass Effect 3, Forza 4, a new Fable game, and Disneyland?!), and ended on Halo. Yup, Halo 4 folks, comin' at ya in 2012... from 343 Studios and not Bungie. The House That Bill Gates Built spent a lot of time talking up connectivity between Live and Kinect, including voice browsing using Bing, new Dashboard controls, and a DVR capability coming sometime this year. Their focus was clearly on bringing the console to the masses and making accessibility via Kinect a major component of the Xbox experience. Not so great for the hardcore gamer, though they tried to cater to that crowd, but as IGN's Ryan Geddes explains Microsoft is looking to appeal to an audience that wants everything at their hands.

Electronic Arts

Modern Warfare Killer?

Mass Effect 3 was the first punch out of the gate from Electronic Arts, and the hits kept coming. Huge sellers like Madden and FIFA had their due, PlayStation-stalwart Insomniac revealed it's new multi-platform game, and SSX apparently was a big crowd-pleaser for the old school, but it was Battlefield 3 that came, saw, and conquered. Modern Warfare 3 is surely going to be gangbusters when it launches in November, but the guys at DICE raised the bar with their gameplay demo of this PC stalwart, showing just how much their Frostbite engine can do in the hands of artists. GameSpy/IGN editor--and former military man--Anthony Gallegos commented during the live blog that he was "going to have PTSD after this it look[ed] so good" (I guess that's supposed to be a good thing?); definitely an FPS to have on your AC-130 scope.

Ubisoft

No Joel McHale and no laser tag this year, and thus a rather unengaging performance by Ubisoft overall... especially when the highlight AND lowlight of the presentation was the presenter/host, dubbed "Mr. Caffeine" by those tweeting/live-blogging the event. Everyone (everyone being me) was waiting for Assassin's Creed: Revelations to show up, which it did at the end, but before we got there we had to endure Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (with 100% more Kinect!), Raving Rabbids Kinect (pretend to stomp on the bunny-like creatures!), and--you guessed it--Just Dance 3, for ALL platforms, meaning more Kinect! Oh, we did see Far Cry 3, a new Brothers in Arms that looks like the sequel to Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, and a Steven Spielberg-produced Adventures of Tin Tin game.

"You mean we were upstaged by TinTin? TINTIN?!"

Yeah, they should've stuck with Laser Tag.

Sony

If you haven't read anything of mine before, don't be surprised if my opinion of this conference is a tad longer. For one, it did have a little more meat than the other three, for another it was the one I actually got to watch a bit of live, and thirdly it's my brand/console of choice. Starting off with an unscripted apology for the PSN hack and subsequent outage, Jack Tretton kicked off the show with my most anticipated game of 2011, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. If you haven't seen the gameplay footage and trailer presented during the conference, stop reading this and go find them now.

Seriously. I'll wait.

*whistling "Uncharted" theme...*

Drake's waiting, too... for November 1 to arrive

Done? Okay, so Uncharted was a big focus of the event, both at the start and towards the end. Sony also showed off it's other "Third" title, Resistance 3, right after the Naughty Dog presentation, which I do have to question a bit. Why stack the deck there? Throw your heavy hitters into other parts of the conference, space 'em out a bit. Granted, the Resistance 3 demo didn't interest me anywhere near as much as some of the other material present, but it probably would've had more impact if it didn't have to follow up a Game of the Year nominee. The two things that intrigued me most about the Resistance presentation didn't even really have to do with the game, but more around peripherals connected to it: a Move Sharpshooter bundle (similar to the one featured with SOCOM 4 last month) and a new PlayStation-branded 3D television. It's always nice to see a bundle for all that expensive Move equipment, but the TV is certainly a big, big thing: for $499.99, you get a 24" 3D LED-LCD monitor, one pair of PS-branded 3D glasses, a 6" HDMI cable, and a copy of Resistance 3. Oh, and the kicker: the 3D TV has a unique split-screen gaming capability that allows you to play with another player in a split-screen match, using two pairs of 3D active shutter glasses, and each player will only see their portion of the game on the TV. Yes, that's right: no more half-screen nonsense, EACH player sees their part of the action only, full-screen, thanks to the different shuttering of the glasses. That's really kind of awesome... and considering both Resistance 3 and Uncharted 3 have split-screen co-op/multiplayer capabilities, I'm going to guess that they're going to be a huge selling point for this set. Should be interesting to hear more about.

I'll gloss over the rest of the Move-related news items, as they're honestly not that interesting (Kobe Bryant came out on stage to demonstrate Move support for NBA 2K12... and dribbled out of bounds), with the exception of Ken Levine (Irrational Games) pulling a Gabe Newell and apologizing for his criticism of motion control, and especially the Move, and announcing Move implementation for BioShock Infinite when that releases next year (as well as an original BioShock game for the NGP, and that the first BioShock would be included on the PS3 blu-ray disc of BioShock Infinite). We also got some first- and third-party exclusives revealed, including Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time and Dust 514, a project from CCP Games tied directly into the already-established EVE Online PC universe.

Speaking of the NGP, Sony International President Kaz Hirai came out to finally reveal the name of the next generation of the PSP: welcome the PlayStation Vita (PSV). That's right, Vita. Not sure I like the name (Vita is Latin for 'life'... why not just call it PlayStation Life?), but I'm fine calling it the PSV, so we can move on. For those who haven't heard, the NGP/PSV features just about everything you could throw into a portable device, minus glasses-free 3D (seriously, who wants that? ... *dodges Nintendo fruits and veggies thrown his way*), sporting a 5" OLED capacitive front touchscreen and matching 5" touchpad on the back of the device, dual-analog sticks, traditional face-buttons and D-pad and shoulder buttons, front- and rear-facing cameras, microphone, optional 3G connectivity, WiFi, SixAxis motion sensors, and powered by not one but two quad core processors. Whew, that's a lot.

The latter half of the conference focused entirely on showing off games for the PSV: a new ModNation Racers, new LittleBigPlanet, original IPs Ruin (that is also coming to PS3, and saves can be transferred between the devices), Sound Shapes, Riiiiiiiiiiiidge Racer(!), Hustle Kings, Hot Shots Golf, and yes, Uncharted: Golden Abyss. A huge lineup of games, and over 150 developers signed on to develop for the device, and everyone was waiting for Sony to drop the ball and price this thing through the roof.

$249, WiFi model. (Same price as the Nintendo 3DS.) Boom.

Gauntlet thrown

Yes, Sony probably mis-stepped by announcing AT&T as the exclusive 3G carrier for the PSV--you just launched your new PlayStation Certified smartphone on Verizon, remember?--but overall, I think that the "low" price point and the wide variety of games available (so many more that I didn't even mention) will lead to an interesting holiday season.

Okay... so I was impressed by Sony's conference. What about the one that the mainstream press was waiting for?

Nintendo

Wii U.

Yep, that's the name

I don't like PlayStation Vita... but in terms of insane naming conventions, I think that Nintendo's new HD console, set for release next year, takes the cake. It's an intriguing idea, and the new controller is certainly a sweet piece of kit, but damn... Wii U. Thanks, Nintendo. Speaking of the Wii, only one title was shown for their current console on stage, and that was Zelda: Skyward Sword... which they also showed off last year. The conference was dominated by the 3DS and the Wii 2/U/whatever you want to call it, and seemed to hit all the right notes. But man, that name...

I didn't get to attend the convention this year, obviously, but I hope you've enjoyed my recaps of these events, as brief as they were. Check out the major websites for all the coverage of E3 demos, trailers, reveals, and news, and then come back here for more content in the next few days.