Re: Press Conference Round Up

James Sutherland <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:Xns97BF67D6CB3CBjamesguybrushdemonco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

"Niaz Khan" <usenetkhan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:4cdfruF154k4bU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Sony's was poor, no big announcements & talk of pinching ideas. The
PSP became an everything device from a rear view mirror to a GPS
tracker

I just don't get the PS3 at the moment. What does it offer that I
can't get better and cheaper on other systems? What gap does it fill
in the market? The only reason I can see for wanting one is that
everybody else is bound to buy them, so there will be more games made
for it. But that's something of a self fulfilling prophecy.

I'm sure it's a prophecy that will be fulfilled, though; Sony know their
marketing, and have major studio support in Japan at least compared to
Nintendo and (especially) Microsoft, although I think as long as Nintendo
keep up their more casual approach they've a good chance of stealing some
of the market back this gen.

I was quite impressed by some of the first-party game footage for PS3,
though; Lair and Monster Kingdom looked quite interesting, and even
Heavenly Sword could be okay (although it looks a bit clunky).

I wasn't really especially impressed by the Wii presentation. The
games, graphically, looked a lot worse than I was expecting for one
thing. Granted, this isn't a problem for a lot of the games they're
showing, but for stuff like Zelda and Metroid, which are games where
the atmosphere is a large part of the experience, I think the relative
lack of power of the system is going to be a problem. Excite Truck
looked (graphically) dire.

I didn't see Excite Truck's preview, but Metroid looked almost identical
to the Cube version except with lots of shiny silver instead of
interesting design; not too good. To be honest, though, I think graphics
are beginning to hit a zenith; I thought Zelda looked fine, but then I've
pretty much reached graphics-wow saturation point these days (FFXIII
looks good, but I don't think the uber-graphics will make much of a
difference compared to the leap from last gen or the previous one)

Third party support is also a worry. They had to show a Spongebob
game. That's not encouraging.

Spongebob is (was?) pretty big Stateside, although I do share your
concerns.

New DS stuff looks good, though. Looking forward to Hotel Dusk and the
DS Chibi Robo (the GC version was criminally overlooked).

Will Hotel Dusk actually have any appreciable length or difficulty,
though, unlike Another Code?

Andrew H
.

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