Matt: We wrapped up our press conference attendances this morning with Nintendo and Sony. Dean and I went to both while Amber was only in attendance at Nintendo's conference.
Amber: I quite enjoyed the Nintendo conference. While the complaint could be made that no new IPs were shown, most all of Nintendo's major franchises were represented and there were even a few surprises. Nintendo wasted no time in kicking off the show with a crowd pleaser: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Shigeru Miyamoto came on stage to demonstrate the 1:1 sword play and a few of the new items. We'll be covering Zelda and a pile of other titles over the next two days so I'll keep the game details light here.
Nintendo conferences these past few years have been rather heavy on marketing and sales data. This year they did a really nice job of keeping the focus on the games, only lightly touching on marketing information amidst the steady stream of game announcements. Titles presented included Kirby for Wii, sporting a fantastic yarn and cloth aesthetic, Epic Mickey, and Metroid. Show surprises included the new Goldeneye 007, Kid Icarus for the 3DS, and a 2-D Donkey Kong Country title from Retro Studios.
Matt: I have to say I was a little disappointed in Nintendo's conference. Zelda's new look was pretty cool, but not a whole lot was told about anything other than the MotionPlus support. They showed off a lot of entries in well-loved franchises and many of them are likely winners—but very little that was truly exciting. I'll make an exception to that big enough to drive a truck through for Kirby's Epic Yarn, though. It's not just the aesthetic, either, but all the sweet stuff you can do with it. I plan on writing more about this neat game, which I did get a brief chance to try, so stay tuned.
3DS was great to finally see—they let us take a peek at some impressive demos on the way out—but it presentation also held almost no surprises. We'd already imagined it all, apart from the motion sensitivity and the neat concept of Tag Mode as a system service, including automatic Wi-Fi downloads. I hope games use this to as full an extent as possible; I couldn't help but think of the promise of WiiConnect24 that went underdelivered even when we understood that it was just a messaging service. Time will tell. I should say that it really looks great, though, even if it's not the final system design.
As for Sony: their conference did largely fly outside my sphere of interest, though I took particular note of a really neat-looking Move game called Sorcery, involving some cool wand-swinging spellcasting action. Little Big Planet 2 also looked pretty interesting and quite ambitious. Kevin Butler was hilarious as usual. The last thing of note was the announcement of pricing for Move. $49.99 for the lollipop wand, and the crowd cheered. Next slide. $29.99 for the secondary controller. Oh, so you don't have a camera? Next slide. And so on. Let me just say that I don't want to hear anyone complain $60 is too much for a Remote+Nunchuck combo ever again.
All-in-all, it turned out to be a pretty busy day—and a site outage ate some of our live coverage posts besides—but stay tuned, we'll be sharing more with you tomorrow.
Amber: I quite enjoyed the Nintendo conference. While the complaint could be made that no new IPs were shown, most all of Nintendo's major franchises were represented and there were even a few surprises. Nintendo wasted no time in kicking off the show with a crowd pleaser: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Shigeru Miyamoto came on stage to demonstrate the 1:1 sword play and a few of the new items. We'll be covering Zelda and a pile of other titles over the next two days so I'll keep the game details light here.
Nintendo conferences these past few years have been rather heavy on marketing and sales data. This year they did a really nice job of keeping the focus on the games, only lightly touching on marketing information amidst the steady stream of game announcements. Titles presented included Kirby for Wii, sporting a fantastic yarn and cloth aesthetic, Epic Mickey, and Metroid. Show surprises included the new Goldeneye 007, Kid Icarus for the 3DS, and a 2-D Donkey Kong Country title from Retro Studios.
Matt: I have to say I was a little disappointed in Nintendo's conference. Zelda's new look was pretty cool, but not a whole lot was told about anything other than the MotionPlus support. They showed off a lot of entries in well-loved franchises and many of them are likely winners—but very little that was truly exciting. I'll make an exception to that big enough to drive a truck through for Kirby's Epic Yarn, though. It's not just the aesthetic, either, but all the sweet stuff you can do with it. I plan on writing more about this neat game, which I did get a brief chance to try, so stay tuned.
3DS was great to finally see—they let us take a peek at some impressive demos on the way out—but it presentation also held almost no surprises. We'd already imagined it all, apart from the motion sensitivity and the neat concept of Tag Mode as a system service, including automatic Wi-Fi downloads. I hope games use this to as full an extent as possible; I couldn't help but think of the promise of WiiConnect24 that went underdelivered even when we understood that it was just a messaging service. Time will tell. I should say that it really looks great, though, even if it's not the final system design.
As for Sony: their conference did largely fly outside my sphere of interest, though I took particular note of a really neat-looking Move game called Sorcery, involving some cool wand-swinging spellcasting action. Little Big Planet 2 also looked pretty interesting and quite ambitious. Kevin Butler was hilarious as usual. The last thing of note was the announcement of pricing for Move. $49.99 for the lollipop wand, and the crowd cheered. Next slide. $29.99 for the secondary controller. Oh, so you don't have a camera? Next slide. And so on. Let me just say that I don't want to hear anyone complain $60 is too much for a Remote+Nunchuck combo ever again.
All-in-all, it turned out to be a pretty busy day—and a site outage ate some of our live coverage posts besides—but stay tuned, we'll be sharing more with you tomorrow.