E3 2015

[harv]

Well that was a bit pants. Was hoping for more Megatons. The only big thing was a new Zelda for the 3DS.

Starfox looks cool though as does Xenoblade Chronicles X.

[Late]

Ah, it was you. Of course it was you. Yeah, I'd heard there was one person watching the Nintendo presser...

[harv]

Have missed everything because Armando, the guy in Flat C, has been fucked for 3 days. Has a problem with his neck and back which they know about, has an appointment for North Middlesex Hospital on the 20th but whatever the fuck it is has moved up his spine to the base of his skull and jaw. And he's unable to move his arms or legs without a great deal of pain.

Hope they're going to be able to help him out because me or Kev aren't going to wipe his bum or feed him lmfao

He's just got carted away in an ambulance

[harv]

Loads of Nerd Rage following Nintendo's piss poor Digital Event lol

So much so that Iwata has Tweeted an apology.

You can understand that they're busy working on NX projects but you would have thought that they would try and bring some sort of Megatonnage for the Wii U seeing as it's selling like shite. All they had for the Wii U was stuff we already knew about and Animal Crossing lmfao

[jman]

Wii U has been selling like shite since it released.. a half decent E3 wouldn't of changed that lol. 

Looking back on it... Microsoft had the best conference this year.. loads of exclusives plus some good hardware announcements.  Sony was saved by FF7 and Shenmue 3... they were the biggest game reveals (for me).. although neither are true exclusives which is the kicker I guess.   The Last Guardian still has no release date and Uncharted 4 is the equivalent of Tomb Raider being exclusive to the X1.

Bethesda was the best 3rd party conference.. although still don't understand why Fallout 4 was revealed before E3...  I'm looking forward to Fallout 4 and Doom as much as any of the triple AAA exclusives.

Ubisoft also had a great conference... the stand out for me being the South Park game (although have to point out that Obsidian wont be making the sequel - so it could be a lot different) - it was the stand-out mainly because I was already aware of the Division and Rainbow Six Siege.. but they look great.. and cant go wrong with a Ghost Recon game.  Who says they milk the Tom Clancy franchise hey??

EA also showed two great games - Star Wars Battlefront which looks pretty damn amazing.. and Mirrors Edge 2 which looks pretty good too.   I forgot they announced Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 - I was excited.. until he added "Garden Warfare 2" onto the end.. I still love the original tower defense game.. I wish they would make a true sequel to that.

Square Enix pretty much blew their load with FF7 at the Sony conference.. but then they showed off Deus Ex : Mankind Divided which looks pretty spectacular and Just Cause 3 which looks pretty nuts for an open world game.

All in all, a fantastic conference from all involved... (except Nintendo) 

[Late]

Gotta agree with most of Kieron's post, there. I watched half of the pressers live, and most of the others later - I think the only one I skipped was Nintendo's.

Microsoft's was great, and when you consider they've got so much good stuff happening they've deliberately delayed several games into early next year* it's all the more impressive.
I checked my xbox One last night (bearing in mind I'm in the preview program so get some stuff early) and there were about 8 xbox 360 games ready for me to download and install on my One. I downloaded Super Meat Boy, but didn't get a chance to play it. Others there, waiting for me to download, included Perfect Dark, one of the Kefflings games, and Defense Grid.
I also downloaded Fifa 15 and Battlefield 4, to hopefully have a quick blast on while they're free.

The Elite Controller looks fantastic. Shame about the price, though. $150/£130 is a lot of money. A couple of websites had it mispriced at £40ish yesterday, and I gave it a shot, but they both realised the mistakes and cancelled all orders. No harm done - worth a shot.

Most of the games Kieron mentioned look great - I'm looking forward to hopefully playing most of them. I'll confess I've never played a Shenmui game though, so have no idea what that's all about.
(Don't forget Tomb Raider is only timed exclusive, K, rather than a full exclusive. I'd imagine it'll hit pc & ps4 around Feb 2016.)

As for Nintendo, I truly hope they had a bad one because they're hard at work making games for the NX. They need to get it right this time. With the U they brought out an underpowered machine and had no real big games for the first couple of years. If the NX has a decent amount of grunt and has a good lineup at launch and in it's first year then it should be a winner - especially if it comes fairly soon. (A lot of assumptions there. Have they actually officially announced the NX, or that it's a full console yet?)

All things considered, that was one of the best E3's we've seen in the last decade, imo (though of course all the big news about the two new consoles a couple of years ago was the biggest). Very enjoyable, and I'm hyped for several games and developments


*I'm taking them at face value, there. It's possible there have been unexpected delays on one or two of the games, but I genuinely think they've held back Crackdown, Quantic Dream, and Scalebound because their triple-A release schedule is just too full this Christmas.

[jman]

Quantum Break was delayed into 2016 a while ago.. annoying really as its been around since launch.. its slowly turning into vapourware lol.  Scalebound and Crackdown didn't show at all, but I'd of thought they will be 2016 releases too.

I'm so looking forward to Rare Replay.. its funny reading comments about it around the web.. everyone has their personal favourites out of it.  For me.. Atic Atac and Blast Corps were absolutely excellent.  I have to admit to not even playing half of them though... I tried Battletoads this afternoon (emulator) and fuck me that's a tough game lol.  Looking forward to finally playing Conkers Bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark (the first one) and Grabbed By The Ghoulies.  Would of been quality if they could of got Goldenye and the Diddy Kong/Donkey Kong stuff.. as those games are pretty seminal, but I think Activision own the Bond licence now and Nintendo obviously own the Donkey Kong stuff.  Excellent stuff with all the Banjo games on there... Nuts & Bolts is good, but the first two are epic.. I'm looking forward to playing through them again - for me, the first one is better than Super Mario 64 which is still one of my favourite platformers.

[Late]

Yeah, I'm looking forward to the Rare collection, too. Nicely priced, too (£19.99 rrp I think) and it looks well presented.

I'll have played less than a quarter of them. Will be good to see some classics I've missed out on. Having said that, there's a decent chance I'll spend ten minutes each on about three of them then leave it to gather dust. Whenever I get enthusiastic about a collection of classic games I usually end up disappointed by how poorly they've aged.

[jman]

Me too, but 10k Gamerscore should be a good incentive to invest some time into each.

[harv]

They haven't said what the NX is yet. I would have imagined, before they announced absolutely fuck all new for the Wii U, that the NX was their new handheld console. But seeing as the 3DS is still selling a shitload and they've announced a shitload of new games for it I reckon it's more likely to be their next home console.

But that would mean that the Wii U will only have a 4 year lifespan, which I would imagine will result in a fair bit of consumer distrust. Same lifespan as the original Xbox though so it's not unheard of I guess.

[Late]

A short lifespan for the U might be for the best in the long run if it means they move their console cycle away from those of Sony and Microsoft. If all three keep releasing new consoles at around the same time (give or take a year or two) then the Nintendo is now in a position where it'd need to be the most powerful of the three to stand a chance of "winning".

If they're out of the cycle and release something 3 or 4 years after Sony/MS's last one and 3 or 4 years before Sony/MS's new one then they should be in a decent position. Natural progression of technology should mean they can produce something that's more powerful than the latest ps/xb, and give them a couple of years of unrivalled console dominance before the new playstation and xbox come out. A couple of great years, then a couple of poor years, repeating like that should keep them strong in the console market for the forseeable future. Has to be better than the current cycle of a couple of bad years, then a couple more bad years, then a few more bad years...

[jman]

They should just pull out of the console hardware market altogether and concentrate on handhelds where they obviously excel and start pushing their best IPs onto more mainstream platforms.  Their main problem is that they lack 3rd party support and they produced hardware that was too cost prohibitive for the consumer and developer.  The main reason the Wii was a success was the accessibility of the system which included a low entry price.  Even then, the sales fell out of the Wii towards the end of its lifecycle which was years before the 360 and PS3 lifecycle (and they are still going at a steady pace).

They need to produce inexpensive hardware to attract the consumers.. this will attract the 3rd party developers.. and they will start to do well again.  The moment they try to compete with the PS4 and X1 again is the moment they will fail.  Even I admit, I'd probably buy a Wii U for sub £100.. just to play some of the Nintendo games.  If they think I'm going to stump up double that.. to just get a "basic" system.. they've got to be a bit screwy.

[Late]

I reckon that if they brought out something in 2016-2017 (ie a long time before the next xbox and playstation are likely to appear) that was £300-£350, had similar architecture to the ps4/xb1, and was more powerful than the ps4 it'd do well. It should be perfectly possible to do so. With the natural progression of tech, it shouldn't be costly or difficult to release something in 2016 that's more powerful than 2013's machines, and if the xb1 and ps4 are both selling for around £200-£250 it seems likely they're costing less than £200 to produce. I don't think they're loss-leading machines.

You've then got a machine that has full third-party support and the most stable/consistent 1080/60 visuals (possibly even consistent 4k) - plus a load of Nintendo exclusives (assuming they pulled their fingers out and actually released some in the first year). I reckon it'd be a massive hit.

[jman]

You don't just release a machine and get full third party support though.  Why has 3rd party support pulled out on the Wii U.. because they don't make any money..  the installed user base is too small, development costs are too high, typical Nintendo consumers have niche tastes (instead of mainstream) and probably some internal Nintendo restrictions have a part to play aswell.

They haven't had a console with decent 3rd party support since the SNES - and the only "real" success story they have had since then was the underpowered, cost effective cheap Wii.. and even that had a watered down 3rd party support. 

Nintendo are innovators in some aspects and produce some great games... its a shame they insist on locking them away behind their piss poor consoles.  Either make it cheap so everyone can play.. or don't bother!

[harv]

I think it's time that Nintendo cleared out their entire upper management tbh, they're just out of touch with the industry. Time for them to bite the bullet and start releasing consoles with plenty of power I think. And as much as I love the latest gimmicks such as motion controls and the GamePad's touchscreen it's pretty clear that third party publishers and developers aren't up to anything other than cookie-cutter games these days.

You'll still find third party games selling less than first party games on Nintendo games because Nintendo's IPs are just too big and popular, plus there's a huge gap between them in terms of quality and polish. I can practically guarantee you that the latest Star Wars Battlefield game will be practically if not literally unplayable online at launch, it happens with every DICE game. And then look at the mess that MCC was in for ages, and that was a Microsoft first party title for gawd's sake. I just don't think that a number of Nintendo fans are happy enough with the quality of third party offerings. I also think that there's also a physological problem with third parties too for the same reason. They know that they can't compete in terms of quality.