It’s a shame that Sega didn’t allow any hands-on time, and even more of a shame designer Atsushi Inaba was on hand to demo the game but wasn’t available for interview (except to some outlets, I guess, though I don’t know who). Inaba looked incredibly bored playing his own game over and over again, the poor guy.

Capcom Looks To The Past – Street Fighter IV is excellent, Mega Man 9 not so much.

Final thoughts – Very much what it says it is – my final thoughts on E3. I talk a little about how the whole event is doing (not very well) and some of the themes of the show, but what I think is the most important I feel I should reiterate here. E3 should have a real press accreditation system. They should hire staff that know the games industry, know who the writers are and who the fanboy bloggers are, and work with the writers to make sure the coverage is as good as possible, and then trust that they’ll do a good job.

Right now the whole of E3 seems to be built around keeping the journalists at a distance – just close enough so the fanboys think they’re getting coverage, but not close enough that the journalists actually write anything meaningful. With fewer, higher quality press, E3 would be easier to manage and coverage would be higher quality.

Or at least, I think so, anyway. I really don’t think it’ll happen. Instead, the show is going to ramp back up to its old size – if not next year, at some point in future. Because it’s what people really want. Spectacle, not meaning.

That’s pure speculation, of course, but why else would they allow Cammie Dunaway to walk out and spout this toe-curling script about being the world’s best mom? This is a woman who has worked in PR and marketing for a long time – and that includes working with Pepsi on kids and teens marketing – so I’m pretty sure she knows how to play the game (and that’s the marketing game, not Shaun White Snowboarding, which she’s horrible at.)

The overwhelming message of this approach was that Nintendo simply could not care less about the “core gamers” market, and are throwing their lot whole-heartedly to new “mom” market. As in, they sat down in a meeting, you know, Reggie, Iwata, etc. and said “let’s get moms interested in the Wii. Let’s do a press conference at E3 for the moms.”

And then that’s what they did.

The interesting thing is that my hypothesis only makes sense if Nintendo literally care so little about the “core gamers” market that they don’t care about the backlash at all – as they would have to have foreseen it. And to be honest, why would they? They’re making money hand over fist, and there is still a huge untapped audience of people who don’t play games out there. They’re advertising to moms at E3 because their demographics tell them that’s who they should aim for next, not because they’ve all gone insane and forgotten who their “real fans” are. They couldn’t give a damn about their “real fans.” And from a business standpoint (if not a “moral” one) that’s completely acceptable.

What I didn’t find acceptable though was the MotionPlus accessory. Why? Well because it proves I was right all along about the Wii Remote not sensing exactly where it is in 3D space. I said that in my Wario Ware: Smooth Moves preview from E3 2006 and was so disagreed with by “the internet” that the article was edited to make little to no sense (and remains that way even now.) Yes, I am still bitter about it. But by god I can’t help but almost forgive Nintendo for it when I tried out the MotionPlus. It’s absolutely superb – it does everything they said the Wii Remote was going to do, and feels amazing. It really is like waving a sword in Wii Sports: Resort’s sword fighting game; it really is like throwing a frisbee in the disc dog game.

It’s tremendously exciting, even if it is yet another add-on to the Wii.

Nintendo plays a different tune with Wii Music – I wouldn’t say I found Wii Music exciting though. I thought it fit in very well with their current strategy, looked cute and fun and everything, but it wasn’t exciting, no. It won’t be displacing Guitar Hero or Rock Band any time soon, but as I say in the article, Nintendo obviously have no interest in competing with them.

Or, when it gets down to it, with anyone at all.

Sony fails to inspire, but why? – Unlike Sony, of course, who need to get to competing fast – real fast. This was almost certainly my most divisive article for CBC – at least one commenter would like to pain me as a Microsoft “fanboy” disappointingly – but I think it’s perfectly fair. I’m very excited for Flower and Valkyria Chronicles, but they’re otherwise utterly floundering.

You may note that I blogged about E3 for the Canadian Broadcasting Company! Exciting, no? Why I’m mere steps away now from becoming the “go-to” guy when Jian Ghomeshi wants someone to cover video games on Q, or when George Stroumboulopoulos needs someone for the same thing on The Hour. Or at least that would be the plan, anyway… Though realistically I’m probably not much closer to it.

Anyway, my coverage! I decided not to go for the obvious route and write up “this is what happened” or “this is what I played” blog posts, and actually write a small analysis for each one. I think it kind of worked out, though it was a lot harder than I thought (writing commentary while your brain is fried from over-stimulation is… difficult, let’s say.)

Microsoft looks to Wii to take on PS3 and Xbox gets lips, Final Fantasy XIII – this was originally just one article, but was sub-edited into two. As I was writing for a specifically Canadian audience (not something I often do!) I wanted to make sure to lament that the Netflix thing wasn’t announced here. Which kind of sucks.

EA’s Dynamic DNA – I concentrated on the announcement of NBA Live ’09’s Dynamic DNA from the EA press conference, because I thought it was roughly the most exciting and “new” thing they talked about. I suppose it would have more resonance with the CBC audience if it had been announced for NHL ‘09, though.