The Franchise

After all the dust has settled and the big announcements have been made, who do you think is "winning" so far? I think the race for the top two slots is close between Sony and Msoft, but the XBOX took it by a nose me thinks. Just looking at the trailer for Halo 2 makes me hope the XBOX comes down in price by next year. They also had XSN, and Doom 3 etc. Not too many surprises but what they showed looked solid.

Sony dropped the bombsheel with the PSP announcement. Scoff if you will but you know Ninty is shitting bricks about this one. If they aren't then their stockholders sure are. Launching this in Q4 will be interesting too because it will lead into the PS3 launch the next year. Other cool stuff was the GTA and MGS exclusivity and a bunch of online games including (drumroll) GT4, which will consume me this winter. All of EA games being online on Ps2 only was also a big coup. The Eye-toy looks like a good way to expand market share and get younger or less experienced gamers past the hurdle of "learning the controller" before playing. Sure the games looked so-so, but it's promising technology.

Nintendo underwhelmed me this year. The new MGS looks like a high-res version of the 7 year old PS2 game. RE4 looks cool and the Star Wars game looks like GTA in the star wars universe (jack all sorts of creatures and vehicles and ride them to battle), but they lacked quantity of games Mario Kart will be awesome no doubt, but there just wasn't enough beyond that. This whole GC-GBA connection dealy just doesn't sound compelling to me. Maybe I'm not the target market, but the GBA is not a good controller for console games. It's not super ergonomic and has a bunch less buttons than next-gen controllers.


Anyone else want to chime in? Please keep the bashing to a minimum. We don't want another "eye-toy" thread.

Gallant Pig

Let's try this again without the inane arguing/personal crap, thanks

Gizmo

I think Nintendo won.

Nintendo had Mario Kart, Wario World, Rogue Squadran, Metal Gear Solid and the three new Sonics for cube. For GBA they had tons of great games including Mario & Luigi, Super Mario 4, Advance Wars, Wario Microgame, the GB Player, and more.

PS2 didn't really have anything from what I saw. The Eye Candy wasn't impressive, nor was the announcment of the PSP (which may never even be made). I didn't see any decent games with the exception of Jak and Dexter II and the new Finla Fantasy (was Kingdom Hearts II there? I couldn't find it).

Xbox has alot of new games coming out like Conker, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, the different Star Wars games.. Only dissapointment was there was no smaller Xbox that most of us had heard of.

nickdawgy

Am I the only person in the world that hasn't played the original Halo?

joshd2012

I think Sony won.

The announcement of the PSP was a huge shock to the entire industry. This not only effects Nintendo with their industry leading GameBoy series, but also new-commers Nokia with their N-Gage. I also think the announcement and demos of new sequels like Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, Jak II, GT4, and MGS3 showed promising futures for the exclusive game line-up (being that all these games are exclusive, and their predecesors were top selling games on all platforms). Sony showed a strong willingness to provide high quality games to its large user base.

ID showing off Doom 3 was second. That trailer still makes me smile every time I watch it. Half-Life 2 also looked great, and the new gravity addition works great with that I-Beam.

Nintendo really didn't have any big announcement. A whole lot of Mario games (as expected). The Sonic games are nice, but who knows what Sega is going to do in the end. Microsoft had Halo 2, but an announcement about a smaller X-box (maybe even one without a HD) would have been nice. Really a downer.

Gizmo

What did everyone think of the N-gage? Its a neat idea, but I couldn't imagine talking on that massive thing... However, the games seem kinda cool (Tomb Raider, Sonic, Red Faction..)

devilshalo

There were more hot chicks than last year. That is all.....

sniper308

How can they announce an x-box without a hard drive when many of the games require the space of the hard drive? (i.e. they cannot fit the save game on a memory card). At least that's my current understanding. I have only had my Xbox a short time, but have this impression from multiple threads here about save file sizes.

Outlaw

I don't think any company won E3 this year, the real question is which game won E3 this year, and in that case it really comes down to opinion and what kind of games you like to play and they all seemed pretty evenly matched. Not as many surprises this year as a lot of stuff was leaked just a few days before like the Rogue Leader III and MGS3 stuff.

For the Gamecube, I'm really interested in playing some Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike, Viewtiful Joe, Tales of Symphonia, and Resident Evil 4, Final Fantasy CC, F-Zero GX

On the PS2 side, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Castlevania, Star Ocean 3, GT4, Ape Escape 2

And the Rare stuff on X-Box, like Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Kameo, hopefully they can get these games out before 2010 .

The only thing I was disappointed in was that Yuji Naka promised earlier that they would show Virtua Fighter Quest for Gamecube and it was a no show. Also, there was a rumor (which was probably unfounded because it wasn't at the show) that Mario 128 was going to be shown, which it didn't. That and no Xenosaga Episode II either. But I suppose they'll be shown in due time, I'm still downloading lots of movies from E3 and haven't watched them all yet.

mee2

I din't wals aounr the floor thinking about "who won E3", but rather what the best games of the show were, and IMO they were Halo2, MGS:SE, Rogue Squadron 3, and a little PC game called Painkiller....

Gizmo

I thought the Smaller Xbox had the same hard-drive as the original one, or a slightly smaller, yet faster drive.

Also, Castvania for PS2 looks AWESOME! Im glad they kept it semi 2D/3D

lostatmidnight

I had my xbox for about five months until I bought Halo two, three days ago...great game though, that is for sure....Good to hear about the xbox and some good upcoming games---still waiting for Ninja Gaiden, but have finally heard Mafia is shipping this fall..

al_bundy

I played Halo and got bored. It's just another FPS to me. I prefer Ghost Recon.

nickdawgy

I heard Halo rocks, obviously everyone I talk to loves it....is it all aliens and stuff? I hated the part on Half-Life when you went on the alien planet and killed the aliens there, I preferred killing them on Earth, lol. That's what I was worried about, it being too much like Half-Life.

Ghost Recon was great, on the PC at least. Haven't tried it anywhere else. I loved Mafia too, great game.

Hmm, maybe I will get an Xbox after all.

Grimfarrow

According to Gamespot, here are the most requested games post-E3:

1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2)
2. Half-Life 2 (PC)
3. Gran Turismo 4 (PS2)
4. Doom 3 (PC)
5. WWE Wrestlemania XIX (GC)
6. Halo 2 (X-Box)
7. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (GC)
8. WWE Raw 2: Ruthless Aggression (X-Box)
9. Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike (GC)
10. Resident Evil Outbreak (PS2)

Which should give a rough guide as to what is most anticipated.

Lastblade

Nobody won, but alot of people lost IMO. Sony? a joke, PSP was not even shown, whoopie. Nintendo? I guess if you like their Mario Kart but Star Fox looks like a bad N64 game. Xbox? Halo 2, right, it is not coming out this year... Sega? Fzero is the most impressive and the dropoff to the excitement level to the next game is pretty big...

I like Gradius V, that's one sweet looking game (by Treasure). Other than that, I am happy for SNK coming back in a small way in the USA. Other than that, this year's E3 is just the quiet before the storm (next year when they all announce the new systems).

Don't get me wrong, there are some really solid games shown (maybe the real winner is PC with HL2 and doom 3), but nothing mindblowing and Konami can shove their movie-with-a-game-in-it MGS3.

Jackskeleton

SNK's booth was pretty bare bones. the trailer for SNK vs CAP was just a let down. I really don't see how SNK could be successful with a system in the coming years. Sega's booth showed more life then a lot of others. PS2 was a bit lacking, but then again I'm not a big fan of most of the games they sport so that wouldn't help me much. Xbox has some neat stuff and nintendo had a lot of different games that will please the folks with the system already but I'm not sure how some would bring in many new customers.

DOOM III, they really dropped the ball by not having more then two screens and a stand representing it there.

Half-Life 2 thrilled folks with a 3+ hour wait in line to just watch it.

Trigger

All consoles presented more games than the previous year I think - PS2 looked the weakest in terms of games compared to last year, but they did announce some compelling things, so I can't say they lost. Xbox had a great booth. 3rd party developers had some great stuff as well. Nintendo had more titles than last year, but it didn't seem like people cared as much as before. Microsoft isn't really interested in the Asian market and it's pretty obvious. They made some critical errors this year and pissed off certain key developers which will end up hurting them later. I think when it comes time for PS3 and Xbox 2, Sony will once again be on top and Xbox will be second. In the Asian market, the Xbox will continue to do poorly. Nintendo doesn't really seem like they are going to be much of a threat to either company in the future... it almost doesn't even seem like they're in the same console war.

I don't think there were any clear 'winners' because Sony had a weak software lineup (IMO) but big announcements. Microsoft trumped their price drop announcement and had some great games to show, but then they lost ground in the Asian market and even lost some key developers because they don't know how to be flexible like Sony is. Nintendo had more games than last time and some cool titles, but they didn't seem to be getting much attention at all. PC gamers and MMORPG gamers are the winners this year I think.