E3 Day 2

The E3 conference continued yesterday with Sony and Nintendo holding their press events. You can read the live blogs from Engadget over in my shared items.

I have to say, I really feel like Microsoft had the best showing this year. Nintendo was up first yesterday morning and they really just didn't talk about much that got me excited. The new Wii MotionPlus system looks pretty neat. It's an add on to the Wii Remote that refines the motion-sensing capabilities of the remote so that you have a true 1:1 representation in the game of your arm movements. They also showed off a couple of games that are going to be making use of the balance board that came with Wii Fit. It's nice to see that we're going to be able to get some more use out of the board besides just Wii Fit. Other than that, they talked about a game called Animal Crossing that I'm not interested in at all and Wii Music, which might be fun, but from reading the live blog, I'm not sure. Overall, I was pretty disappointed with Nintendo. They seem to really be focused on the "casual" side of the market. They mentioned that they were working on new Mario and Zelda games, but that was all that was said.

Sony wasn't much better. They really didn't do or say anything that made me want a PS3. The only thing that came close was the announcment of God of War 3, but even that was just a short pre-rendered CGI movie and no realease date. They've added movies and tv shows to the Playstation Store, but the xbox has had this for a year or more now. They also showed a brief clip from a game that they didn't even give the title for that is supposed to have battles with 256 online players. This would be a huge feat and a first for a game console, but without a title or realease date, it may be years before it hits the shelves. The biggest announcment, to me at least, was that they're brining the 80GB version of the PS3 down to $400 and killing all backward-compatability with PS2 titles. I had held on to several PS2 games so that if I ever got a PS3, I would still be able to play them. Looks like I can trade those in on Rock Band 2 now.

So overall, Microsoft clearly had the most exciting, most feature packed press event this year. Activision (makers of Guitar Hero) is supposed to hold a press event themselves sometime. I'm sure they'll mainly be talking about Guitar Hero 4, so it'll be interesting to see what they show to mitigate the hype for Rock Band 2.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul