As I write this, I'm roughly 38,000 feet over Albequerque, NM, making that annual trek to E3. At least three of my plane-mates are also going to the show -- one is attending his first E3 with Digital Entertainment News, the two others are using old Gateway credentials to sneak their way in (and stand in front of you in line for that game you have to play before deadline, no doubt). I've already seen five PSPs (not including mine), which is five more than I have seen outside of a store before today. If nothing else, this E3 has given me a chance to play some two-player Lumines for the first time, so it's alredy a qualified success.
Just because I'm in transit doesn't mean I'm not keeping up the world of game journalism, though. With an hour to kill in the airport this morning, I skimmed around an article entitled Fear and Loathing at E3 over at Defunct Games. While it doesn't quite hold up to comparison with the piece it draws its name from, it has still got some great tips for journalists attending the show.
I also picked up a copy of the latest Time magazine at an airport newsstand, lured by the sight of Bill Gates and the Xbox 360 on the cover. Indeed the cover story is all about Microsoft and the "hip ... killer app of video games" as the cover boldly proclaims. The sub-head on the article itself talks about how the new system "changed your living room forever" (note the past tense). These are some bold claims, considering the system is months from release and has yet to sell a single unit, or even show a playable demo to the general public.
Lev Grossman's relatively meaty eight-page article covers a lot of ground. It talks about the Xbox 360's hardware design and how un-Microsoft it is. It discusses what Microsoft is now calling "Digital Entertainment Lifestyle" and the business model of delivering all sorts of digital content to an online-enabled, one-stop, set-top, living-room box. It talks of the growing market for games and the need to attract new gamers. It even includes a great sidebar on how gaming is no longer limited to a nerdy niche and another on some of gaming's rising personalities, from Fatal1ty to Will Wright.
(It also has another sidebar, "From Geek to Chic..." on the history of games. The timeline fails to mention the NES but does note the seminal release of "Thrasher: Skate and Destroy" which, the timeline notes, was "the first game with an old-skool rap soundtrack." I'm sure we all remember where we were when this important event in gaming came to pass. To its credit, the timeline does mention Electronic Games, the first video game magazine, and pictures an issue with the now amusingly outdated headline "Can Asteroids conquer Space Invaders").
Where the article is most lacking is in describing exactly how the Xbox 360 will revolutionize actual games (and not the "digital entertainment ecosystem" as Microsoft refers to the rest of the system's functions). The article spends a good three paragraphs talking about the system's ability to crank out amazing graphics, making the somewhat dubious claim that "one reason games aren't considered art is because they don't look like art," in the process. It also claims that extra-detailed faces -- like those seen in The Godfather -- will "suddenly" be able to "emote," unlike the "blocky, too smooth cartoon faces" seen on current systems. Sounds a lot like Sony's lofty promises for the PS2's "emotion engine" to me.
The article does spend two pragraphs backing this up with a rather vivid description of Call of Duty 2. Supposedly, the new technology will make the game a "startling leap forward" over the original in terms of emotional impact. But it's not entirely clear where this decription is coming from -- whether Grossman was working from a video or a live demo of the game, or even if he was just repeating promises from Microsoft PR.
There's also some discrepancy in the reporting of Microsoft's current market position -- the text cites DFC intelligence for a 68/17/15 percentage split for Sony/MS/Nin (respectively) in the current North American market, but an acocmpanying graph cites NPD data showing a 56/25/19 split. By no means a small difference.
These are nitpicking complaints, though, for what is overall wide-ranging analysis of Microsoft's new system and its strengths and vulnerabilities in the next round of the console wars. It'll be interesting to see if and where Sony or Nintendo will pull off their own mainstream cover features.
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Well, I don't picture mainstream (corporate) media being to friendly to Nintendo, though maybe Sony. Sony and Microsoft are big corporations intertwined with the whole media environment. Nintendo is very limited in any such ties. I think the entry of major corporation into the video game industry and the related interest from corporate media is a main reason for gaming taking the turn from Nintendo/Sega domination to Sony/Microsoft domination.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this sounds like another problem that I talked about with the PSP where the press reports in such a cheerleading way about one console or another that it can't help but to sway the public.