E3 Day One: Hitting the Road!

E3 Day One: Hitting the Road!

Greeting sports fans! Yep it is Day One for E3 for me (1st day of exhibits, anyway) and I am not long from grabbing a subway ride across town to the Convention Center. Was skeptical of "should I go today?" since there's a bigmeetup to deal with tomorrow, but I suppose I should at least get myself somewhat 1st-person informed so I will know what everyone is talking about when that does happen. Anyway, I'll likely post a video recap of today's experiences this evening, but in the meantime here's a couple of stray pre-show thoughts to wet your whistle.

Conferences - watched these (in different degrees) from home (they are broadcasting lots of stuff here at Gametrailers.com). My thoughts as follows:

• Xbox 360/Kinect I only saw the later part of this conference, so it was all their "casual Kinect-looking stuff." Can I say after 3 years I am tired of hearing MS trumpet about Natal/Kinect so much. I understand it's purpose, and yes it is fun to play for a bit. All that is being done with it is not terribly exciting however (would I love to take a crack at designing a Kinect game? Certainly!") All the kid-based casual stuff makes my stomach turn, but then I guess they really need to compete with that growing marketplace

• Sony Well, they certainly came with a lot of strong 1st and 2nd party games. Everything looks solid, and.. man.. there's a lot of competition in FPS land. Not much really to get my motor roving about, however, and a surprising lack of Japanese support. Whoa. As for their Next Generation Portable, now called "Vita" - I dislike the name, and I think the device is a bit misaligned, but I think it will find it's fanbase. Too early to say. I will rant on this later.

• Nintendo Just finished watching the live broadcast of this conference. I'll sum up my feelings thusly; 3DS looks rad (should have shown this all a year ago and they are paying for it now), and the new console - dubbed "Wii U" - there's a lot of reactionary posts going on right now, and this is one of them. I think it feels like a half-step, personally. This is Nintendo simultaneously trying to argue with both Microsoft and Apple. This thing looks like an iPad with buttons. It doesn't look "bad," and if they can truly come with visuals that (even somewhat significantly) trump the current-gen hardware, then the masses of graphic whores will eat it up. The big-screen as a controller however, that's another story. For so many years N has been all about "gimmick, gimmick, gimmick" and I think it's getting a little tired. The 3DS gimmick is still sort of early to call, and I do think that "personal screen system" would do well in a vacuum - but they are competing against too many successful devices with this thing. All of Apple's products are going to keep pushing, PS3 will potentiallyhave some strong Vita-console crossover, and ironically enough the Wi U could be competing with 3DS!

Anyway there's some initial thoughts to chew on. I'm out to the con right now - watch this evening for a YouTube Wrap-up, and thanks for tuning in :)