E3 and the new consoles

Well, it’s E3 this week, and like many
other gamers I have been kee­ping up to date with the buzz of the industry. I’m
not going to post facts about new con­so­les or anything, I mean, who wants to
come here for a news source!? Suf­fice to say, I will post my opi­nions on the
upco­ming enter­tain­ment mammoths.

Xbox
360 was the first of the three con­so­les to be
revea­led, albeit on the shitty MTV extra­va­ganza. The 30min advert pac­ked show pro­vi­ded
us with a brief glimpse of the con­sole shell, 10 seconds of game play foo­tage
and some happy hob­bits tal­king to pro­fes­sio­nal no life gamers and the
inva­lua­ble opi­nions of the all kno­wing pimp my ride team. Fan­tas­tic, luc­kily I
down­loa­ded this mons­tro­sity and could skip all the shit, such as the Killers
per­for­mance. Of inte­rest was Per­fect Dark Zero. Of what I could glimpse I was
exci­ted, things loo­ked nice and really I was just happy to see that the game
phy­si­cally exis­ted. Upon reflec­tion, the graphics weren’t ama­zing and at no
point did I feel myself saying ‘wow’. Moving on to the Our​Co​lony​.net video, “a
flip­ped and goo­sed” ver­sion of the MTV show that gave a little more
infor­ma­tion; I began being exci­ted about the pros­pects of the new live
fea­tu­res, the video inte­rac­tions, the new con­tro­llers, the wire­less fea­tu­res,
the three core pro­ces­sing power and the USB device out­look. Howe­ver, being a
gamer, the prin­ci­ple error in the unvei­ling of the Xbox 360 sys­tem cove­rage was
the dis­tinct lack of GAMES. Nowhere to be seen were game trai­lers, game
foo­tage, game announ­ce­ments, game deve­lop­ment. Aside from the EA deve­lop­ments
(tweaks) and PDZ, I’ve seen nothing. If I am buying a game con­sole, the most
impor­tant thing to show me are the games, who cares about Xbox live if the only
game to sup­port it will be Mic­ro­soft Soli­taire 3D. So, while in the few days
run­ning up to E3 I was exci­ted… the thun­der has since been sto­len, by Sony.

lang=EN-GB>Playstation lang=EN-GB> 3, wel­come chang3. I was awake in the
early hours of the Bri­tish mor­ning to lis­ten to the Sony con­fe­rence and the unvei­ling
of their new sys­tem. I watched the two hour con­ven­tion with awe. I’m not a
par­ti­cu­lar Plays­ta­tion fan boy, yes I own a ps2 but
my favou­rite con­sole of the current gene­ra­tion is easily the Xbox. I wasn’t too
sto­ked about the ps3, I had sub­cons­ciously igno­red the
hype asso­cia­ted with it. In watching the con­fe­rence I had no real expec­ta­tions,
I’d heard of the cell pro­ces­sor but nothing of its capa­bi­li­ties. When the 2
tera­flop per­for­mance power of the cell, the graphics pro­ces­sing of the class=SpellE>nvidia RSX, the high band­width ram and bus, the 7 wire­less
con­tro­ller capa­bi­lity, the 1080p sup­port and the back­wards com­pa­ti­bi­lity were
announ­ced there was a glea­ming grin across my face. Then I saw Vision class=SpellE>Gran Turismo, Motorc­ross

and Kill­zone trai­lers, I saw the real time Unreal Tour­na­ment
pro­ces­sing power and I was astoun­ded. This is a con­sole I so dearly want. I have
abso­lu­tely no care for the Xbox 360, des­pite their release of the sequel to my
favou­rite game, Per­fect Dark. I honestly can’t wait to get my hands on the raw
power of this machine, wha­te­ver the price. And I may just have to get a PSP to
com­ple­ment it.

Nin­tendo
Revo­lu­tion. Not much on this yet but I’m hea­ring
some sig­ni­fi­cant buzz con­cer­ning “touch” patents, a revo­lu­tio­nary con­tro­ller
and back­wards com­pa­ti­bi­lity. I have faith in the inno­va­tion that is Nin­tendo
and I look for­ward to their future announ­ce­ments (Mario 128? Please).