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by Kyle Ackerman
Koei has been a force to be reckoned with in Asia for a long time, but has been a slowly growing presence in North America. From its start here as a publisher of niche tactical action and strategy games, Koei has grown tremendously, and is now decidedly a big boy in the gaming space. Koei even has a game coming next year developed in North America. At E3, only two of Koei's games were playable (Monster Racers and Warriors Orochi 2 for the PSP) and both are due out shortly (August 25), so I'll give you an overview of Koei's upcoming offerings rather than extensively preview things that will be out shortly. Here's what Koei has on tap:
by Kyle Ackerman
The old Electronic Entertainment Expo is dead. A new E3 has been resurrected in its place, built from the ashes of the old Expo, but it's not really the same beast. When the Entertainment Software Association and the heavy hitters of the industry collaborated to kill the E3 of old, they simply didn't foresee where things were going. But, to be honest, neither did I.
by Kyle Ackerman
To open Sony's 2009 E3 Briefing, Jack Tretton (President and Chief Executive Officer of Sony Computer Entertainment America), declared that "2009 is going to be all about content on the PlayStation 3." Truly, Sony showed an impressive array of exciting software, but Sony also had the most interesting and exciting hardware announcements of the show.
by Kyle Ackerman
Nintendo's briefing at this year's E3 was decidedly underwhelming. Like Sony's press conferences of old, there was an air of smugness to Nintendo's presentation, but Nintendo added little in the way of real content to the mix. After gloating about Nintendo's admittedly impressive hardware sales, much of the presentation was a tired retreading of previously announced software and hardware.
by Kyle Ackerman
With its usual impressive stage set-up, multiple colossal screens and hundreds of dynamic lights, Microsoft launched its E3 2009 briefing with a trailer for Beatles Rock Band. Launching into a live play session of "Day Tripper," Beatles Rock Band became the keystone of the Microsoft's presentation, taking on the same kingly role that games like Halo, or the Xbox 360 console itself, have occupied in recent years. The emphasis on the Beatles was surprising given Microsoft's other important hardware and social networking announcements.
A lot of breath and plenty of text has been wasted debating the issue of whether video and computer games are (or even can be) art. Participants in the debate range from angry teenagers defending their favorite pastime on forum boards to established members of academia and the press with graduate degrees in areas like film or art history making their arguments on... well... forum boards. (And sometimes in established journals and newspapers.)
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was once the biggest event in the world of interactive entertainment. Certainly, to find a show that rivaled E3 in size and importance, you had to go to Japan or Germany. So, for computer and video gaming in North America, E3 was it. Hundreds of journalists, industry analysts and retail buyers vied with thousands of junior retail staff and every fanboy who managed to cajole his way in, to identify the upcoming hits, sleepers, flops and stories of the day. Companies hated it, because to produce a spectacle on that scale, you have to spend staggering sums of money. Developers hated the annual crunch as they tried to get demos done in time for the event. Journalists and businessmen hated navigating the hordes of screaming, sweaty fans trying to make press meetings behind closed doors, even if those closed doors were simply flimsy screens in the middle of the show floor.
So the E3 of old was cancelled, and the E3 Media and Business Summit was born.
by Kyle Ackerman
Sony made its E3 presentation this year in the Shriner Auditorium in Los Angeles, a venue that has played host in the past to Microsoft and its Xbox 360-related announcements. On a stage literally dripping in flat-screen LCD televisions, Sony vaunted everything the PlayStation 3 does well – lots of style and spectacle. Led by Jack Tretton, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony presented (in Tretton's words) "A PlayStation brand that's really hitting its stride."
Tretton led the audience through a slew of new features on the PlayStation 3 that promise to make it an incredibly compelling platform, including movies, more downloadable games, and community features such as weather and news. It sounded, and it will be, great... but it would have been better if it had arrived when the PlayStation 3 launched, and not nearly two years later.
by Kyle Ackerman
Nintendo took the stage this year for its E3 press conference with a quiet and calm confidence. But this was not the vibe of a company that feels it has led the gaming industry into a new segment of gaming that brought millions of new gamers into the fold. This was the quiet confidence of a company with mysterious plans for the future. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's Global President, said that "a true paradigm shift has taken place in the global gaming market." Everyone agrees that Nintendo has opened up a new market and helped popularize casual gaming on consoles. Yet, Nintendo's focus during its press conference was how it plans to change gaming in the future.
Iwata declared that Nintendo strives to continually surprise gamers by "pioneering new paradigms." Iwata and Nintendo's leadership did their best to create the impression that they have plenty of new surprises in store for Wii and DS gamers, but at today's event they unveiled just a few touches, including new games, a microphone for the Wii, Wii Music, the Wii MotionPlus, and new applications for the DS.
They say that the Xbox 360 is trailing in the console wars. "They" say. Is that the same "they" that say your shoes are out of style and that Fred or Connie will go home with anyone after a drink or two? Well... yes. It's the enthusiast gaming press saying such things. Microsoft denies it, with the kind of hubris that has characterized past Sony press conferences, where the Japanese giant reveled in its confidence that no one could overtake its recent supremacy in the console space. Microsoft proclaimed its lead, relying on sales figures, upcoming games, and a bevy of features ranging from an interface and avatars designed to emulate the best of the Wii, to family-friendly franchises ripped from previous PlayStations, and Netflix support.
Microsoft may feel that it's in the lead, but it's not afraid to steal the best and brightest ideas from its competition. Read on to see what Microsoft thinks will cinch a lead for its console. Don Mattrick, Senior Vice President of the Interactive Entertainment Business for Microsoft, was confident enough to proclaim, the "Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide than the PlayStation 3."
Courtesy of the fine folks at Paradox Interactive, we are giving away two downloadable copies of Supreme Ruler 2020 to the readers of Frictionless Insight.
Supreme Ruler 2020 is a strategy game from Battlegoat Studios for the PC in which players take military, economic and political control of a nation, leading that nation to global supremacy. The first iteration of Supreme Ruler was released in 1985, with the most recent release (Supreme Ruler 2010) being in 2005. Read on to learn how to enter:
by Kyle Ackerman
Sometimes I miss New York City. Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV isn't the real New York City – it's a condensed caricature. But the fidelity made possible by the latest generation of consoles and the detail added by the team at Rockstar North made Liberty City close enough to the Big Apple to make me listen for the rumble of the subway and the mixed smells of burnt pretzels, sour garbage and laundry vents. The landmarks are all there, from Lincoln Center and Grant's tomb to Coney Island's Cyclone roller coaster and the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows. (Different names, but still.) But it's not the landmarks that make Liberty City so accurate. It's the little details: the architecture in the nameless buildings; the style of familiar stores; the street-level garages of particular hotels; the barriers in the middle of streets; the ever-present scaffolding; and even the signs reminding me that it's a two-point offense to "block the box." The South Street Seaport was so perfect that I started to think "Hey... there should be a heliport just past the Seaport that I don't see." Then, as I cruised further south, the heliport popped into view, and I discovered I could take helicopter tours. The city felt so real that I was transported back to the city I was both ecstatic and sad to leave a few years ago. Sometimes realism &ndash even virtual realism &ndash isn't as great as it's cracked up to be.
by Kyle Ackerman
When gamers think about open-ended games these days, the Grand Theft Auto series is often the first sandbox-style series that comes to mind. But my fondest memories of exploring a seemingly-endless world come from piles of floppy disks, back when the Electronic Arts logo was an inexplicable amalgam of cube, sphere and pyramid. In 1986, not long after my chance to search the new world for the Seven Cities of Gold, Binary Systems helped me crew my ship to save Arth (no... not Earth, Arth).
Electronic Arts has made a series of offers to purchase Take-Two Interactive that recently became hostile. Take-Two Interactive's Board of Directors has formally rejected the offer and (of course!) recommends that its shareholders don't cooperate with Electronic Arts' $26 per share cash offer.
Electronic Arts has commenced its hostile takeover bid for Take-Two Electronics.
Electronic Arts began by making a series of friendly acquisition offers to Take-Two Interactive that rose to a price as high as $26 per share in cash. Take-Two rejected the offer, claiming that the bid was too low and that Take-Two would prefer to wait until after the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, when the company felt it would be in a stronger position. EA issued press releases, appealing to investors (and provoking a class action lawsuit contending that Take-Two was violating its fiduciary duty).
by Kyle Ackerman
I had a chance to sit down with David Hoffman, executive producer of OGPlanet, to talk about OGPlanet's business and latest game Cabal Online. OGPlanet is one of the companies in North America pursuing games that are free to play. As Hoffman explains, OGPlanet is specifically looking for quality games with a successful track record that the company can bring to the North American audience.
by Kyle Ackerman
E3 2007 was a success. But only for the publishers who didn't need it.
In its new format as the E3 Media & Business Summit, it wasn't a success for most publishers, who either showed the same material they had released in previous weeks or who were shut out of the new event. It wasn't a success for financial analysts or press, who mostly saw repeat performances of games and missed meeting with those esoteric companies and tiny publishers. Buyers gave the event a miss entirely. It wasn't even a success for the public, who enjoyed the spectacle of the old Electronic Entertainment Expo vicariously through the same press and company websites that bemoaned the old event. It may have been a success for a few publishers and developers who had meetings they easily could have held elsewhere.
Sony's press event at the 2007 E3 Media and Business Summit was the most like past years of any event, yet the least like Sony. Once again, Sony held its conference on a Culver City sound stage (though the conference setup took less than half the space of previous years, and had fewer than half the attendees). What made this year so different was that Sony seemed almost... humble. Starting with Jack Tretton's (President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America) self-effacing manner, Sony's tone was less smug than in past years.
Nintendo's press event at the 2007 E3 Media and Business Summit was the most remarkable of the three platform holders' events, in that Nintendo actually had a few surprises to throw at the crowd. To be clear, most of the Nintendo event was self-congratulatory, celebrating the success of the Wii and the DS with an endless stream of YouTube videos and clips from various news shows. The Wii, and its success so far, is a remarkable achievement, and Nintendo should be proud. But no one goes to such an event simply to hear a company gloat. We want news... announcements... actual content. And Nintendo did have a little content to offer.
Most of the conference, however, focused on the new gamers Nintendo has brought, and hopes yet to bring, into the gaming fold. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime declared, "this E3 marks a conclusive turning point for the video game industry" and called the event, "a coming-out party for an entire industry." He wasn't speaking of the mess that is the new E3 Media and Business Summit. Instead, he meant that video games are actually reaching a broader audience, demonstrating that everyone is, on some level, a gamer.
Microsoft's press conference for the E3 Media & Business Summit began this year with a group of five teenagers from Illinois playing music on a high school stage. Admittedly, the band (named Corporeal) was comprised of five exceptional youths, led by an electric violin, and they were playing the theme to Halo with a massive image of the Horsehead Nebula serving as a backdrop for screenshots of the upcoming Halo 3. The stage, too, was a bit fancier than that first sentence lets on. The Santa Monica High School outdoor amphitheater was dressed to the nines, decked out with a high-tech backdrop, an enormous screen and enough flat-panel TVs to make an entire college frat house drool. But it was still a couple of teenagers on a school stage.
In the fall of 1997, I moved to New York City for my first year of undergraduate school at NYU. While settling in and looking for a new job in The City, a friend, aware of my video game fascination, circled an ad in the Village Voice looking for game testers at Acclaim Entertainment. I joked that this was the perfect job for me (as people often had), but decided it really was too good to be true when I found out they were located on Long Island. At the time, I was dating a guy who lived in Montauk (the LI spot furthest from NYC) – so my idea of Long Island was of this place an ungodly distance from the city, and no matter how great the opportunity, I looked into it no further.
Kyle Ackerman
As a creator of worlds, Richard Garriott has a kingly air – he is the sovereign of his fantasy worlds, just as Lord British reigns over the worlds in the Ultima series. By contrast, Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab, comes across as the burgeoning Adam Smith of Second Life, a man more interested in shifting away from the monarchy of game design and creating an information and content-based economy.
Gamers have been waiting since 1997 for a true sequel to the PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII. Despite the many Final Fantasy games released since then, none have resolved the events begun in that game. While the final release date is yet unannounced, the sequel is on its way. And it looks as staggeringly beautiful as Square Enix's CG sequences typically look. But it isn't interactive. As many of you have known since this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a film that will be released on DVD.
Recently, Eastman Kodak Company started publicly showing prototypes of its Stereoscopic Imaging Display system. It sounds complicated, but it is simply a device to display three-dimensional images without needing to rely on another set of filters (like polarized lenses) between your eyes and the screen. The current prototype looks a bit like the sensory apparatus on the set of a 1950's era space opera, but is surprisingly comfortable to use. You may have to plant your face in huge visor for the time being, but Kodak hopes that after additional research and several iterations of the technology, the Stereoscopic Imaging Display will become a device that can comfortably sit in the living room, and that multiple people will be able to use it to view three-dimensional images from a comfortable distance – like a couch.
by Kyle Ackerman
I had a chance to sit down with Loren Kaiser, Vice President of Operations for Digital Interactive Systems Corp. (DISC) and see some prototypes of DISCover game consoles. DISC provides technology to companies so they can build console-like units that play PC games on a television set. I realize you've had a lot of questions about this product – read on to find out a bit more about the company, its product, and playing PC games on the TV.
Kyle AckermanNew York, New York
The tour's official site: www.nintendofusiontour.com
It's no wonder Nintendo is sponsoring a tour headlined by Evanescence. The band is certainly popular – enough to completely fill Webster Hall in New York City with a screaming crowd – but that alone doesn't explain Nintendo's interest in sharing the marquee. Amy Lee, vocalist and front woman for Evanescence, strode onto the stage in a dress like Alice's (of Wonderland), but in pink and white, with sneakers and a single striped stocking on her right leg. The white parts of the dress were defaced with magic marker words and phrases such as "psycho," "slut," "I Will Endure," "woman" and "Insane." She described her outfit to the crowd as innocence destroyed and defaced. To the crowd at Webster Hall, she was more than a music idol – she's part of Nintendo's bid for adulthood.
by Robert de los Reyes, Esq.
Like swallows returning to San Capistrano or buzzards to Hinkley, Ohio, I have returned to my native land &ndash Texas. While FI headquarters remains in New York (at least until I persuade them of Texas' virtues), one of the majesties of modern telecommunications is that home base can be anywhere you are. I am a one-man mobile outpost. I assume it is only a matter of time before I turn into a Snow Crash gargoyle, collecting and disseminating information, spewing data back to central command with the hope that some of it proves useful. Or perhaps I'm getting carried away. Nevertheless, the idea of maintaining a Texas outpost strikes me as an amazing thing. That paperless office that technophiles promised the world is nowhere in sight, but, at least for folks in a business like ours, the mobile office is very much a reality. In any event, in celebration of my return to the mother country, permit me to blurt "y'all" loudly. Y'ALL!
