E3

There’s a good chance you’re aware of the Electronic Entertainment Exhibition (E3) that’s currently underway in the US - the yearly trade show of all things new in the videogames world. We’re in that lovely part of the gaming timeline that only happens once every four or five years - existing technology and platforms are becoming obsolete and new and improved consoles are being announced at this time of year… the upshot of which is that very soon, the bottom will fall out of the market for this generation’s software and even new titles now are cheap.

Obviously the XBox 360 is already upon us, and so far my experience of it is that most people I know are just playing Halo 2 on it. There’s definitely no real killer app to get them flying off the shelves - Project Gotham Racing 3 is supposedly quite nice but after my three-lap evaluation on a demo pod, I could care less… but not much.

Halo 3 has been announced at E3, however - definitely something to get the units off the shelves but it’s just not here now. So we’re still left without said app. From what else I’ve read on Microsoft’s showing at E3, they’re pushing their Live system about a bit - Noticed that the new version of MSN Messenger is actually now ‘Windows Live Messenger’? There’s some bonkers connectivity shenanigans brewing and it will either be very exciting or very shit. Judging by the recent versions of MSN Messenger, I fear the latter, if not for adverts alone.

I appreciate that MSN Messenger is free but I feel the adverts should not spread to paid subscribers on XBox Live.

Sony appear to have made a bit of a meal of their Playstation 3 launch, too - general consensus of the XBox 360 launch is that having two different versions is a rubbish idea and should never, ever be done again. So, what are Sony doing?

Yep. As a side note, they’re also championing Blu-Ray media, and making the PS3 a DVD/Blu-Ray player, much in the style of the PS2. Blu-Ray is capable of storing High Definition visuals (for use with those shiny HiDef tellies that I know very little about, besides that at the moment they’re a massive faff), but the ‘budget’ PS3 model will not be able to output in HiDef. At all. Not even via an upgrade.

(The ‘budget’ model will retail for 500 Euros. The ‘deluxe’ for 600. What…?!)

They’ve also put some motion-sensing equipment into the controller, mimicking the Nintendo Wii’s Wiimote, and a ‘Home’ button, blatantly copying the XBox 360’s, um, Home button. That and triggers (at last!), and also the removal of the rumble function. Initial response seems to be a big fat ‘why?’ to the removal of rumble, but it looks like the designers are claiming it is needless and to be consigned to the past.

Everybody else says ‘no it’s not’.

Aside from that, however, I’ve not heard anything else about the PS3, which is surprising considering the PS2’s market dominance - I would have expected all the faff to be about it. However, it appears to have fallen to Nintendo to steal the show, with the Wii (nee Revolution)…

The Wii’s control mechanism is its main difference to the other consoles out there - instead of using a bog-standard control pad with analog sticks and what have you, they’ve stuck some clever technology into a remote control-shaped thing and attached an analogue stick to it in a nunchaku fashion. It appears that the nunchaku will be interchangable.

Either way, you do stuff by waving the controller around. How is that not the best thing ever? Reports seem to indicate that people are having a tough time getting used to it as it’s not what you’re used to, but we’ll see what happens yet…

They’ve also got a sequel to Yoshi’s Island coming out at some point in the future, a new Mario game and the rumblings that the Wii will be retailing for a ‘price that you will like’.

I’m quite excited about how this is all going to pan out.