E3 Console Wars
This year's E3 was dominated by the media madness surrounding the initial launch of the three next generation consoles from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. The thirst of the games industry, and an extremely competitive mindshare game being played means that there is just as much non-information as there is information. Microsoft will be the first one out of the gate launching the Xbox 360 this holiday season. They had demo content running on the show floor – even though it was really running on the initial development kits. As usual, the leap in content was extremely underwhelming – making most folks call the Xbox 360 the Xbox 1 ½.
This caused Sony to accelerate the announcement of the PS3 – although they won't admit it. Sony had my favorite kind of next generation content at their press event – the famous pre-rendered demos that showcase “what the device will be capable of”. This is the kiss of death. If you look back at what these demos looked like for the first Xbox launch, you will note that the device never delivers on these promises. To be fair, the devices are probably capable of rendering such content, but the effort required to create such content makes it pretty much impossible from a cost perspective. In fact many game developers have commented that they have no idea how they could create such content for the PS3.
Finally, we have the next generation Nintendo console – the Revolution. This one had the least amount of information. We do know that it will be the lease powered of the three. And, we know that it will run the entire backlog of Nintendo console content – which means that it will be the first one I buy. It is also the one that is least likely to try to be your centralized media device (which Xbox 360 and PS3 are setting up to be) – which means it will have great game content.
Nintendo also showcased the GameBoy mini – which basically looks like a cell phone form factor that playes GameBoy games. Interesting, but I will pass.
Networking is definitely on the forefront of all the new game consoles. Each has announced some form of networking support. One of my other predictions appears to be playing out as well. Premier hosted networking services for online games. The Xbox 360 and Nintendo Revolution will have them, so it is likely that Sony will follow suit. Yahoo Games is talking about beefing up their service. And, a number of new companies are popping up to support such environments.
There is still lots of information we don't know about the new consoles – price points, actual launch dates, games available at launch, full backward compatibility stories, hard drive or none, ..... No doubt, all that info will follow over the next year.
That's it for now. Next up will be a look at interesting E3 booths.
Posted at 04:08PM Jun 02, 2005 by dtwilleager in General | Comments[0]