E3 '11

[KallDrexx]

Dude, you're supposed to hold the controller right below the TV ^^

It's their new extension of Wii Fit!  Build up arm strength while playing your regular games 

[01101010]

Seems Nintendo has hit the press release rather hard. I have yet to see a news site not mention this new console along with "it will transform gaming." 

[HaemishM]

Dude, you're supposed to hold the controller right below the TV ^^

It's their new extension of Wii Fit!  Build up arm strength while playing your regular games 

I eagerly await the line of neck brace contraptions that will hang the goddamn thing 6 inches from your face at eye level.

[Azazel]

I'm not liking that controller.  Looks uncomfortable.

Controller the size of a dinner plate? I'm in! 

I guess it looks like, iPad sized. I got the Wii for something different. This just inspires indifference with me.

[01101010]

Someone get on the meme for "someone stuck an iPad in your Wii controllers." 

[Azazel]

Is it also a touchscreen? That would be delicious. 

[Chimpy]

So someone decided to make an Atari Lynx work as a controller for a Wii?

[koro]

Did anyone else catch Geoff Keighley "grilling" Reggie while looking like a complete fucking goon?

He raised a few good points, but good lord that was an embarrassment.

[Typhon]

Is it also a touchscreen? That would be delicious. 

This quote is from Ars - "The new controller, with its motion controls, touchscreen, and ability to intimately share data with a single player, is the real draw."

Yes, it's touchscreen.  Might be able to play a decent RTS game on a console now, because of that touchscreen.

I have to say, if I had people that came over my house to play games with me, the bolded part would have me excited.  Simplest example that I can think of is: TV shows the board, controller shows my hand.  I think it opens up those types of games.

I don't get the hate for this, more choice of controllers seems like a chance for different types of games.  I'd like to see it succeed (which depends upon people having good game-ideas to work with the controller).

[01101010]

Designing games around hardware... hmmm... where have I heard that before.

[Ingmar]

TV shows the board, controller shows my hand.  I think it opens up those types of games.

Yeah this to me is the biggest potential awesome thing about it.

[Amaron]

Who the hell is going to be able to afford this thing though?   That screen is not going to be cheap.  When the console costs you 300 bucks and the 3 controllers for your friends cost another 300 bucks it starts looking a bit iffy.

[Typhon]

Designing games around hardware... hmmm... where have I heard that before.

The Wii, which was wildly successful.  Was there a point there?

[IainC]

Yeah motion controllers were a complete dead end which is why you haven't seen Microsoft and Sony rushing to jam them into every goddam thing that they could.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Can the console even support more then one wiki screen controller at a time?  Multiple controllers would need multiple streMs of day being sent at o ce and none of the footage shows more than a single controller being used at a time.

[MournelitheCalix]

Same trailer for ToR.  I wonder why it is that Bioware isn't showing us how this game plays.  At this point I have to wonder who made the decision to show CGI over and over again. 

[tmp]

There is some group gameplay footage buried in live stream, link to it is in the SWTOR thread.

What you can see there kinda explains why they'd go with the cgi instead

[Merusk]

Seems Nintendo has hit the press release rather hard. I have yet to see a news site not mention this new console along with "it will transform gaming." 

Nintendo IS gaming to a lot of people.  They know about Sony and MS but they're "for those hardcore guys and kids" so it's not as accessible to them.  News did their tech piece about E3 today, 3 mins of Nintendo and the new console and then what amounted to "Sony apologized for being hacked and showed off a new device.  Microsoft was also there."

As for myself, I withhold judgment.  It's potentially a very nice integration of their strength in handheld systems with console power, but we'll see. If it only supports one controller it's pointless.

[luckton]

Same trailer for ToR.  I wonder why it is that Bioware isn't showing us how this game plays.  At this point I have to wonder who made the decision to show CGI over and over again. 

I've seen about a hour of unique ingame footage via live streams and fansites.  If you really care about the game, why would you solely rely on G4 for info?

[Typhon]

Seems Nintendo has hit the press release rather hard. I have yet to see a news site not mention this new console along with "it will transform gaming." 

Nintendo IS gaming to a lot of people.  They know about Sony and MS but they're "for those hardcore guys and kids" so it's not as accessible to them.  News did their tech piece about E3 today, 3 mins of Nintendo and the new console and then what amounted to "Sony apologized for being hacked and showed off a new device.  Microsoft was also there."

As for myself, I withhold judgment.  It's potentially a very nice integration of their strength in handheld systems with console power, but we'll see. If it only supports one controller it's pointless.

I agree that it's not nearly as exciting if it only supports one controller, but I wouldn't say pointless.  By making it a touchscreen they are essentially providing a mouse to a console (e.g. touching the console screen turns on a mouse on the tv).

[Merusk]

Same trailer for ToR.  I wonder why it is that Bioware isn't showing us how this game plays.  At this point I have to wonder who made the decision to show CGI over and over again. 

I've seen about a hour of unique ingame footage via live streams and fansites.  If you really care about the game, why would you solely rely on G4 for info?

If you really want your game to be seen, why wouldn't you link such things from your main site?

They've failed marketing this round.

I agree that it's not nearly as exciting if it only supports one controller, but I wouldn't say pointless.  By making it a touchscreen they are essentially providing a mouse to a console (e.g. touching the console screen turns on a mouse on the tv).

A console that supports only one player but isn't portable is pointless.  You've made either a very bad tablet or a very expensive, inexplicably tethered handheld.   Part of the appeal of consoles is the multiplayer on a single device.  If I want to play a game with my kids I shouldn't have to buy another $300+ unit and play over the internet.

[luckton]

If you really want your game to be seen, why wouldn't you link such things from your main site?

They've failed marketing this round. 

I'm sorry the devs are trying to make the whole week entertaining instead of blowing their whole load on day 1?

[caladein]

It has nothing to do with that.  MMO combat is really dreary to look at and I'm pretty sure EA wants to avoid the whole "It's just WoW with Lightsabers" meme as best they can.

The thing they do want to push up (dialogue time) is also really dreary to look at so it's going to be cinematics for a long long time.

[Margalis]

From what I heard it will support one tablet controller rendering an entirely separate game screen and maybe more than one for more simple functions.

Each screen takes up bandwidth and processing power on the host machine. So it seems highly unlikely it could support 4 of these things at once refreshing at 30fps.

The system supports Wiimote, Classic Controller, etc. I hope it does support more limited functions on multiple controllers, so you can do stuff like choosing plays in Madden on your own screen or games with hidden info and things like that. It seems like it should be technically possible as long as you lower the refresh rate. So if 2 people are connected you render each of their screens every other frame, taking the same bandwidth and processing power that a single controller would refreshing at 30.

That would be my guess, based on no inside information.


I think Nintendo is assume that most people already own Wii input devices that will also work on this thing, which is a pretty safe assumption.

[Margalis]

Or at least, that's where they lose me, because for what, 2, 3 iterations of Nintendo consoles, they've had shitty shit shit shit 3rd party support. It killed the Wii for me and I was a pretty big cheerleader for the system. Fuck Nintentdo until they can prove they deserve otherwise.

In the past the differences between different hardware platforms were fairly substantial and cross platform games took a fair amount of effort and were often basically separate games. Assuming this is similar to previous Nintendo systems as far as APIs and such it's probably closer to the 360 than the PS3 is as far as programming for it. Until PS4 and XBox720 I don't see any reason why devs who have cross-platform engines wouldn't extend them to this.

If it is supported by Unreal Engine 3 that's like half of 3rd party games right there. 

[luckton]

E3's big three in a nutshell:

[Amaron]

From what I've heard though it sort of sounds like the whole idea is the games will be made with one super controller in mind.   Everyone else uses Wiimotes basically.   That basically kills my interest.   I can see how the system would be good if it gets good games.  We saw how that worked with the Wii though. 

[Sky]

Same trailer for ToR.  I wonder why it is that Bioware isn't showing us how this game plays.  At this point I have to wonder who made the decision to show CGI over and over again. 

Like luckton says, they've shown a LOT of gameplay. I've seen group and solo stuff with Daniel, and there's a raid video, too. The dude has been all over the place showing stuff off. What other developer is pushing a cart of four computers around to show off group gameplay to different media outlets during their interview?

[Merusk]

If you really want your game to be seen, why wouldn't you link such things from your main site?

They've failed marketing this round. 

I'm sorry the devs are trying to make the whole week entertaining instead of blowing their whole load on day 1?

You're getting a little defensive and fanboish, here.  It's a really simple thing for them to do that makes sense if they're out there throwing it out anyway.  Expecting those interested to hunt shit down like an obsessed fan is marketing failure.  They have a site for a reason, NOT putting the info up there is asinine.

This isn't some "wah, they're not telling us and trickling out information," bitch.  This is a "fuckers, you're showing it, show it on your site, too."   It's not unreasonable.

[ffc]

GT Video of Wii U controller in action.  Tech demo "experiences" or not, I'm underwhelmed. It's like the Wii managed to get more annoying to play.

Golf was mentioned separately, placing the Wii U controller on the ground for its display to show the ball on the virtual ground.  That's a neat idea but I don't see anybody awkwardly swinging a second Wii U controller around as a club.  So while the Wii U may come with one Wii U controller I think the waggle controllers are staying around as alternate / multiplayer inputs.

[Spiff]

If you really want your game to be seen, why wouldn't you link such things from your main site?

They've failed marketing this round.

Nine times out of ten watching MMO gameplay is a close second to watching paint dry (it certainly is for TOR), so they obfuscate this with big, shiny, expensive trailers (trying to push the narrative sensation the game's supposed to be).

Isn't that usually what marketing is for?

Devs may want the game to be seen, marketing wants it to sell, they're doing just fine considering.

[Sjofn]

Even games I *know* I enjoy playing, I don't like watching gameplay videos of, personally. I'm a terrible gamer nerd. :(

[luckton]

You're getting a little defensive and fanboish, here.  It's a really simple thing for them to do that makes sense if they're out there throwing it out anyway.  Expecting those interested to hunt shit down like an obsessed fan is marketing failure.  They have a site for a reason, NOT putting the info up there is asinine.

This isn't some "wah, they're not telling us and trickling out information," bitch.  This is a "fuckers, you're showing it, show it on your site, too."   It's not unreasonable.

It's not unreasonable, no.  But again, if they put all the info on the website, what's the point of going to the convention hall for the exclusive?  A lot of press people could save a shit ton of money in travel fees and such if they could just sit in their lazy boy and report from home.  Considering how high profile the game is, I'm sure there's also several exclusive previews that members of the press have locked in too.  GT.TV did theirs yesterday with the raid trailer.  Today will probably bring more stuff.

And I'm willing to bet that at the end of it all, it'll all be up on their website. 

I also agree with the others...watching someone play a MMO makes my skin crawl at times, esp. if it's some newb keyboard turning.

[tgr]

Personally, not showing actual gameplay is a huge warning sign. It began (for me at least) around MW2 where all we got were a few sound snippets, which turned out to be from literally the most boring part of the game, and which the media drummed up a metric fucktonne of drama over. To me, it says "we know the game isn't good, so we're going to show you some mystical ad instead".

Showing some of the gameplay (not too much, but enough to give me an idea of what sort of game we're looking at, or what kind of story we'll be looking at) is, to me, pretty important. There's so many games out that I need as much information as I can to make a decision. vOv

[Velorath]

Personally, not showing actual gameplay is a huge warning sign. It began (for me at least) around MW2 where all we got were a few sound snippets, which turned out to be from literally the most boring part of the game, and which the media drummed up a metric fucktonne of drama over. To me, it says "we know the game isn't good, so we're going to show you some mystical ad instead".

Showing some of the gameplay (not too much, but enough to give me an idea of what sort of game we're looking at, or what kind of story we'll be looking at) is, to me, pretty important. There's so many games out that I need as much information as I can to make a decision. vOv

There's pretty much a shit-ton of gameplay out there to look at though.  Yeah, they could have handled the marketing here a bit better, but really, who else is paying attention to everything coming out of E3 other than the hardcore gamer who already knows about this stuff and is going to hunt it out if interested.  The links to the videos, live streams, and hands on impressions are out there on NeoGaf and all the various major game sites and MMO sites.  You pretty much have to bury your head in the sand to not be able to find some E3 coverage and videos of SWTOR.