E3 is going on and Sony had unfortunate task of following Nintendo in a year that Nintendo brings it’s A-game but on to Sony. Like always they had a montage filled hype concert, I for one was not impressed with what Sony had to show. The Marcus campaign is weak, the disaster that is Playstation Move, and their strategy of announcing their games before the show. I’m not blind, I did see the good parts too. The partnership with EA is huge especially seeing how EA has been stepping it up as of late, and portal 2 coming to the PS3 with former PS3 hater Gabe Newell coming on state and admitting he was wrong and adding Steam works to the PS3 version. Sony has been doing this for a while now and they seem to have a hard time changing their style. Arrogance is another annoying feature of the Sony shows, and while these are competitions, you kind of come out looking like an ass when you’re the only one talking trash. Sony spent a good amount of time bashing Microsoft in their show by poking fun at the Kinect reveal show and the funny thing is that Microsoft acts as if Sony doesn’t exist in their show. Nintendo on the other hand did poke fun at Sony and rightfully so. Sony is making a almost 1 to 1 copy of the Wii-mote and Nintendo one upped them by showing 3D done right.
The Marcus campaign is a weak attempt to create a new Kevin Butler. Them seem to forget what made Kevin Butler great was that no one had made a ad campaign like that before. Trying to cash in by milking it with a new character specifically for the PSP is pretty weak and Kevin Butler is good enough to do it all. Marcus is a quite annoying character and while he might be funny in movies, even they keep him at a minimum. Instead of giving him his own ad campaign use him in the Kevin Butler ads as a tag team but alone I don’t see it working.
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While Sony had good intentions by announcing their games before E3, it seemed like everyone was talking about E3 and not their games. When Sony did show their games at E3 it didn’t have the same pop it would have, had we not already known about them. One game that stood out was Infamous 2, I was a huge fan of the first game. I put more than 50 hours into playing that game more than once and seeing how different the game looks with the redone Cole has really changed the way I see that game. The new Cole looks like a douche and he sounds like he’s going to be annoying throughout the game. I know I haven’t played it and I shouldn’t judge until I can play it, but it really doesn’t feel like the game I really enjoyed last year. The last thing that really bugged me was the final reveal. Telling everyone your not working on a game and saying your not going to be at E3 only so you can try to play it off as a surprise is weak and quite pathetic.
The focus on 3D was really hard to watch, they just seemed like a crappy salesman yelling at you. “Trust me, its really cool! We are doing it better! COME ON LOOK AT ME!!!!” with the 3DS coming with 3D that doesn’t require glasses or a really expensive TV, it really makes Sony look like they are biting on the heels of Nintendo. Microsoft has also come out and said their system supports 3D but they are leaving it up to the developers to add it to the game or not. What this means is any multiplatform game that is coming to the PS3 that has 3D is also coming to 360 just without Microsoft having to spend money on advertising for it. The 3DS is the only system doing 3D right, they have it without glasses and its loaded with other tech to make it a better experience.
In conclusion, I really saw Sony as 3rd place in the “E3 wars”, Microsoft had a message, Nintendo is evolving before our eyes (finally), and Sony just ended up looking a mess. This E3 had the possibility of being the biggest ever but with weak showings from Sony and Microsoft it has really dampened my feelings of this show this year. I hope these two bounce back at Gamescon and TGS but as for E3 pretty weak showing from the big two now this could also just be because Nintendo bought so much to their show this year. These are my opinions on the show, I’m not here trying start a flame war or to tell lies, I just came into this with really high expectations and the company I expected the least from (Nintendo) really shocked me. I hope Sony takes a step back and just looks at the last few E3’s and take notes on what not to do anymore. No more montages, no more numbers and please let the PS2 die already!