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E3

E3 2005 - A Look Back 63

Posted by Zonk from the tell-me-where-does-all-the-magic-go? dept.
Last week was so interesting I caught the plague and died for two days. Now that I've gotten a rez and E3 has wrapped up, a look back is in order. Ferrago takes a look at E3 no-shows, like STALKER, while GamesIndustry.biz has a look at statistics. The big three PR conferences were some of the highlights of the Expo, and Gamespot tells us who 'won'. The best way to get a feel for what happened last week, though, is to get it firsthand. The Casual Gamer Experiment is over, with his impressions now available. Personal accounts are available at Press the Buttons, GamersInfo.net, CliffyB.com, Grimwell.com, John Davison's Blog, and Jeremy Parish's Blog. Was there any firsthand E3 coverage that you particularly liked this year? What did you think of G4's live broadcasting, if you caught it? Update: 05/23 18:56 GMT by Z : Obligitory PA link. From the post: "I don't believe there is any such thing as a 'Playstation 3' yet, and I don't believe in the Killzone video. What I do believe is that Sony harnessed the media and then rode it from place to place, one hand on the bridle while the other waved madly in the air."
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E3 2005 - A Look Back More

E3 2005 - A Look Back

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  • Rez? (Score:1)

    by Gogo0 ( 877020 )
    Now that I've gotten a rez and E3 has wrapped up...

    Now you got my hope up for nothing, I thought that somehow I had missed out on the revelation of a new Rez game.

  • Next generation consoles. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RemovableBait ( 885871 ) <slashdot@@@blockavoid...co...uk> on Monday May 23, 2005 @12:57PM (#12613404) Homepage
    I think the most interesting thing to come out of E3 this time round was the consoles. It isn't all that often when the three big time players release details around the same dates, and I suspect that many people were interested to find Sony's response to the Xbox 360 'launch party'.

    I think it was most disappointing that Nintendo couldn't elaborate on the capabilities of their latest console or give us an insight into what they truly believe will compete with the PSP -- after all, rumors suggest that the DS is merely a 'third pillar'. It was also pretty dreadful that Sony chose to show concept videos and pre-rendered trailers instead of actual game footage rendered in real time, as Microsoft did -- even if it was on Alpha hardware (read: PowerMac G5s).

    It definitely showed for one thing, that gaming is taking a nice twist down the High Definition path -- and that online services and expectations are much, much higher than four years ago. The only thing I fear, is that the price will be much higher too...
    • The Xbox 360 was about what I expected for the next generation... The PS3 surprised me with some of it's visuals, but that's mostly because it can do many more shaders at once than the 360 can. As far as the specs and what we were shown, I'd say the Cell isn't what it was hyped up to be, it's barely faster than MS's triple PPC. It was made clear that nVidia is way ahead of ATI these days as far as the GPUs went though...

      Even after all the eye-candy and hype explosion, I'm still excited to see what the Re
      • I agree, the PS3 design is aweful. Its like they ripped off some Bose design. And the concave xbox360? Whats that all about? By far, the Revolution looks the best.

  • G4 stuff (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ZephyrXero ( 750822 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .orexryhpez.> on Monday May 23, 2005 @12:57PM (#12613409) Homepage Journal
    The G4 stuff was okay, but I wish they had spent more time showing us actual game footage rather than the hosts chatting about what they thought...
    • Agreed. G4 proved it's long time pandering to the least common denominator with hot chicks, atheletes, and lame skits.

      I want to see game/hardware reviews and news as reported by real gamers, not models picked to host a TV show. Another good idea would be interviews with industry leaders and not celebrities, atheletes, and booth babes.
    • Believe it or not, I'm watching E3!

      Never thought I'd get in so easily!

    • Re:G4 stuff (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Drakino ( 10965 )
      The G4 stuff was what I expected it to be. And it's the same reason I normally skip the channel. They spend too much time cracking stupid jokes, or insulting their audience. Back before the G4/TechTV mess, I'd only watch shows on TechTV for gaming news. I was a bit disappointed when the game show changed into XPlay with a G4ish additude, but back then it was still better then G4 shows.

      The interviews they got with some people were nice, but still not as good as I would hope.

      Oh well, at least we have pl

  • Sony's Presentation (Score:4, Informative)

    by TheCamper ( 827137 ) <SporkMasterSpork@gm a i l . com> on Monday May 23, 2005 @12:58PM (#12613420) Homepage
    I thought Sony's presentation was awesome. The X-Box 360 presentation was all about pizazz, and how they would be everything to every gamer, and how the new Live would change everything. They also showed clips from many action and sports titles. Blah. But Sony's presentation was all about numbers, the new cell technology, and tech demos actually SHOWING what their new tech can do. It was awesome. You can get the micrososft conference here as a torrent or direct download: http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=e3xbox _20050516_300.wmv [filerush.com]. Unfortunately, I can't find a link for the sony presentation. I myself dumped it to my hard drive from a video stream found on Gamespot http://www.gamespot.com/ [gamespot.com].
    • I would have been more impressed if Sony hadn't shown so many "to spec" videos as they call them, or as I like to call them, pre-rendered concept videos. The Unreal 2007, Tech Demos (ducks,leaves,doc oc,ff7) and maybe Fight Night were the only ones that were fairly real demonstrations of what the system can do. Everything else was just theoretical... And if you look back to the PS2's original tech demos they never got to the level they showed in some of them, like the Tekken demo for example...
      • Yes, I was referring to the tech demos. The other stuff is meaningless.

        But Sony's presentation was all about numbers, the new cell technology, and tech demos actually SHOWING what their new tech can do.

    • Re:Sony's Presentation (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rallion ( 711805 )
      I think SOny's focus on numbers is terrible, since none of them actually MEAN a damn thing. Even the ones that aren't just made up are irrelevant.

      Check out the Nintendo press conference. At the beginning, when Reggie comes out, he talks about numbers a little, yes. But at the same time, he makes fun of the other number-heavy presentations a little, when they put up a huge slide that just has a big "2" on it. I think their presentations show where they want to go with their ideas, and that's more meaningful
      • I think SOny's focus on numbers is terrible, since none of them actually MEAN a damn thing. Even the ones that aren't just made up are irrelevant.

        I agree that numbers aren't the important thing here; it's the games. I agree that Nintendo has more heart than Sony. I'm just saying that it gets me excited when I see a demo of tens of thousands of rendered leaves in a huge vortex. It also gets me excited when the man running the demo tells me that there is enough processing power to give each leaf it's own
    • Nintendo play the we're better hardware game when they lost to Sony's 32bit PS1. N64 died.

      Microsoft play the we're better hardware game when they lost to Sony's PS2. XBox did not die, managed to more or less squeeze GB out though.

      Now, Sony's playing the we're better hardware game. Result unknown.

      I suspect the winner will need to have:
      1. More choice of games/developer support
      2. Early to market
      3. Other gimmicks, pricing.

      Also, with the new performance power of the next generation machines - games that w

  • "Winning" E3 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@@@yahoo...com> on Monday May 23, 2005 @12:59PM (#12613447)
    Gamespot tells us who 'won'

    It ain't a competition, people! If it was, Sega'd still be making consoles and Microsoft would be out of the business (after their initial E3 in 2000, which was a disaster).

    The competition comes later in the marketplace. And as has been proven time and time again, the public knows or cares not a whit what happens at E3. E3 is interesting to follow for those of us who do follow it, but it means absolutely nothing to the fortunes of anybody concerned.

    Articles like the one at GameSpot serve no purpose, and the analyst they quote is a moron. Things may or may not shake out the way he predicts, but it won't be because of E3. It has happened time and time again that the "winner" of any individual E3 goes on to lose badly in marketplace in the following years, and vice versa. I'd even go so far as to say "winning" E3, especially when new consoles are introduced, is almost a jinx.
    • and the 2005 e3 winner is:

      Drumroll Please_______O

      Gamers, GameStores, BlockBuster, Gamefly.

      I think the announcement of Backwards Compatability by the big three is the best news since 2 btn controllers. Nintendo's back catalog is unbeatable. Hmm.. What about SEGA? They get to make their old-school retro ports for all three consoles. Not a bad deal.

  • The Real "Winner" of E3 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ndansmith ( 582590 ) on Monday May 23, 2005 @01:06PM (#12613555)
    The real winnders of E3 are the hotels, restaurants, cabs, and various other services which profit from this influx of money annually.
  • Shame about STALKER. I don't buy a lot of games, but this is one that I was really looking forward to, at least based on rumors.

  • This feller has it pegged. I weep for the state of the industry. Enough with the megagames which are all clones of one another...Enough of the CEOs being the ones who make all the money and all the game design decisions and have no clue what makes a truely fun and original game.

    I believe I will be leaving the industry soon as a wage slave and starting my own budget company with a few friends cuz I'm just tired of all the "South Hall Mafia" crap.
    • I may be biased as he's my staffer but after walking that show floor for 8-10 hours for 3 days straight I'd had enough of the sound and lights and not hearing a single game.

      What exactly DOES MEO sound like? I couldn't tell with the heavy metal music from DDO blasting behind me. And that was in a private booth in the West Hall.

      Stargate looked interesting...did it HAVE sound?

      The glare on PSP games was so bad at times I gave up even trying to demo them...

      And yet I should review it??

    • I would add the west hall to the list...

      The state of the industry right now not just E3 is promoting all these cookie cutter games, but to some extent the players are demanding these games while the CEO may not have a good grasp always of what players what but to some extent the players are responsible if we didn't buy the cookie cutter games then the CEO wouldn't make money off them and they wouldn't make them.

      While I would love to say all the fault lies with the Game Makers and the Media, we as the C

  • G4 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tritonblue ( 886212 )
    Honestly, I found G4's "coverage" as vacuous and totally preposterous as anything I've ever seen on TV. And my god, have I watched some bad tv in my day. Superior coverage of an LA trade show may have been readily produced by a blind man in Brazil. Underwater. In a haunted volcano. I call for regime change of G4's hosts. Smarmy, thirteen-pound ignorant gentlemen don't cut it for me.

  • Microsoft failed ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stylee ( 253307 ) on Monday May 23, 2005 @01:17PM (#12613735)
    to get as much buzz as I think they wanted to out of E3. They are only 5 months away from the Xbox 360 launch and this is the main show they had to show it off and generate hype. They did get a lot of hype but I think they were hoping to have such a strong showing that people would already have made up their minds which next-gen console they really wanted. Sony and Nintendo did a good job of showing just enough that most people I know are taking a wait and see attitude towards the next-gen consoles. I think that where MS failed was that while the next gen games for their system are impressive there were too few of them and none of them seemed like must have games, for my tastes at least.

    Sony released their specs and showed pre-rendered game footage. The overall consensus I felt about the the PS3 was a desire to see what it can really do in actual gameplay, since it is supposed to be so much more powerful than anything else.

    Nintendo was a real tease and it drives me nuts. The idea behind the Revolution seems solid but there is absolutely no way to tell how well it has been executed. I am not worried about their specs , I think the Revolution will be comparable to Xbox 360 at least. My main problem with the Revolution was, where are the games? I would have liked to have seen at least something like Sony's pre-rendered stuff for Revolution games. Nintendo is playing this so close to the vest that they may end up putting people off.

    Right now, I get the feeling people are taking a wait and see attitude. If Sony and/or Nintendo deliver on the hope people have for their consoles then 360 could be in trouble. However, if Sony and Nintendo under-deliver or even wait too long to give more details then the Xbox 360 will probably have a huge holiday season.
  • I play mostly RPGs, so I thought RPGamer.com [rpgamer.com]'s coverage of E3 [rpgamer.com] was outstanding for a site that only covers RPGs (though they also covered console news during E3).

  • Xbox 360 on G5s (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore@NoSPaM.gmail.com> on Monday May 23, 2005 @01:34PM (#12614051) Homepage Journal

    I was fascinated to learn that Microsoft used actual Apple G5s [anandtech.com] to represent what the Xbox 360 will be capable of when it's actually working. It's one thing to ship G5s to your developers for use as compile targets for your Xbox IDE; I think it's another to use the box as the working machine for a demo presentation at E3, of all places. For G5s to be used in that venue, they have to be both fast and stable platforms for your code.

    In short, that makes it I think more likely that we'll get Xbox games on the G5 if Microsoft has any desire to ship that. Still an admittedly slim chance, but it's warming to know that these actually run game code full speed.

    • it's warming to know that these actually run game code full speed

      Full speed? I was under the impression (as are most media [msn.co.uk] outlets [ign.com]) that the G5 'alpha kits' seen at the show are nowhere near able to run Xbox 360 game code at full speed.

    • one cool aspect of this trade-show demo is that there is now, finally, an appropriate answer to the PC-cult 'no games on Mac' claim .. not only are there games on Mac, but Microsoft is developing those games on Mac first, then porting them to XBox360 .. so, STFU, game-nerds.

      Mac roolz, you drool!

      • "but Microsoft is developing those games on Mac first, then porting them to XBox360"

        Using a similar hardware platform as a development environment is a standard practice and in NO way means that the games will see the light of day on the dev platform (in this case the Mac).
        What the hell does it matter if the games are developed on a Mac if they are released for Xbox 360? And this isn't a case of PORTING either. Development does not equal porting. The Mac makes sense as a PowerPC development platform for Po
  • While your at GamersInfo.net, check out the other articles and reviews that have been put up about E3.

    Especially the Game reviews.

    They can be found at http://www.gamersinfo.net/e3/ [gamersinfo.net]

  • I think Tycho said it better. (Score:4, Informative)

    by AzraelKans ( 697974 ) on Monday May 23, 2005 @01:37PM (#12614101) Homepage
    Curious but now the obligatory penny arcade reference goes to the written [penny-arcade.com] part

    G4 coverage would have been great... if it wasnt such a huge infomercial for sony.

    First sony tried to convince the audience you were seing a realtime demo in "killzone 2" after that they tried to convince everyone they were showing "real gameplay" sorry sony rep but how can you exactly control a character if the camera is jumping all over the place? also where the heck is the hud? But more important if Killzone 2 is so goddamn impressive then why the heck did they even bothered to show the u3 realtime demo?

    Also why the u3 engine team even bothered to expend 5 years creating the engine for PC if it took 2 months with the SDK for the Killzone team (the fucking killzone team no less) 2 months with the ps3 sdk, to create a demo that goes beyond any other game ever created in terms of realism and complexity?

    Sony has been awarded with the Now Thats Bull! award by IGN, Penny-Arcade and even Gamespot.

    • Of all things to show off ... Killzone. Perhaps they can add a tagline to Killzone 2 of something like "Now with actual gameplay!".

      I played Killzone in the playstation store at the Metreon. Basically, you have a lane like a trench or a path that you're forced to go down, while enemies parade in front of you or come at you and you shoot them down. It's like one of those arcade shooters with the lightgun .. basically you sit there and shoot targets, and occasionally a scene plays where you're told to move
    • This is what happens at every E3 with console releases. And yet everyone still puts down the Revolution and Nintendo because they didn't spout off crazy numbers and show pre-rendered FMV... when will people learn?

      OK on one hand you have two companies generating hype on unfinished products, most of which will never come true or be restricted in some way and on the other we have the honest approach where things are still being worked on and final numbers and gameplay is not available. So at the end of the da
  • I bought a quarterly IGN account just for E3 and I was pretty dissapointed of their coverage this year... I watched most of the stuff for free off Gamespot long before it was posted to IGN, although it was nice to see some of the stuff in high res. I hope they enjoyed my $8, cause they won't be seeing it again...

  • Best, Worst, Etc. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Netjak's got their Best of Show [netjak.com], Worst of Show [netjak.com], and Biggest Surprises [netjak.com] up, too.
  • Gamespot's coverage of the crap section [gamespot.com] of E3 was hilarious. Mainly slightly blurry digital photographs with milk-through-nose-spewingly funny captions below them. Either this is really funny or I am really tired.

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