Category: E3 2007

News about E3 2007

Sony attacks the Xbox 360

Sony marketing VP, Peter Dille, attempted to put glory to his Blu-Ray playing Waffle Iron, the PS3, by stating that HD-DVD was going to be obsolete (but we all knew that, that’s how the lifecycle of technology works) and went far enough to attack the Xbox 360.

The Sony VP “questions” Microsoft in the console market and points out that it has no running ground. “They’ve never made a dime in this business.” Which can be debatable. His next points of why the Xbox 360 is failing are quite amusing. Peter deems the Xbox 360 having an “inconsistent design” and goes on to describe that “some have a hard drive, some don’t, and none of them have Blu-Ray, and the HD-DVD will be out of business in a matter of months. Is this a ten year product?”

10 years? Really now? Sony has never had a console in the market [without a successor] for longer than 10 years. The PlayStation lasted about 5 years before the PlayStation 2 was released. And the PlayStation 2 was obsolete in 6 years.

In order to impress all Sony fanboys, and to make himself flamebait, he stated that the Xbox 360 “doesn’t even work”. Wow. Let me check that. Surprise! My Xbox 360 turned on! Amazing!

“I don’t think that’s a ten year product. You could disagree with me, or they could disagree with me, but I’d put that up against the PS3 any day.”

But he surely would never put any other Sony product (the PSP, PS2 or PSX) up against anyone.

New PSP announced, but still sorely lacks right analog

Yeah, that’s right- Sony announced a new PSP today at their E3 Press Conference, which shares all too much with another company’s redesign: it’s 33% lighter and 19% slimmer, and now comes in white. Yeah, it’s a Sony PSP Lite (ok, it’s still called the PSP). The redesign will maintain its 4.3-inch LCD Screen and UMD disk format…and the one-analog control scheme.

The PSP could greatly benefit from a second analog, and many PSP owners would agree- we’ve been waiting for a newer PSP with an analog. Wasted opportunity! It does, however, support video out, so theoretically you could watch your UMDs and play your games on your TV set- that’ll actually be real nice, as long as the graphics don’t get blown up and look ugly.

Anyway, it’s slated for October, and will also sport improved battery life and *gasp* faster loading times.

Nintendo gets in the act at E3

Alright, so Nintendo had a few things to say at E3, and they were kind enough to go into extreme detail over their new products. The conference started out by explaining how well everything was selling. The DS has a huge market lead, and the Wii is dominating, etc.

Nintendo also announced several release dates for popular upcoming games:

  1. Mario Galaxy is appearing on 11/12/07
  2. The popular sequel to Melee, (Super Smash Bros.) Brawl will bust out on 12/3
  3. Mario Kart for the Wii will drift in near the start of 2008 (and it will come with a custom Wii Wheel)

Besides just listing some of their new releases, Nintendo showed everyone that the Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime is overweight according to their new game Wii Fitness (the game comes with a mat that has a weight scale inside of it). A new game that hopes to take down lazybones and obese people. It’s like one of those exercise videos, except without the horrible music and annoying “Okay, let’s do the downward dog and again. And now breathe in and out” over and over again. The game analyzes your movements and then comes up with a workout plan based on those movements. It also helps improve balance which is good for those who can’t stop tripping.

The last thing they showed off was the Wii Zapper, from the good old NES days (which might be a sign that Duck Hunt will appear on the Wii Virtual Console). The Zapper will cost about $20 dollars, and will come with a bundled game. Wii Zappers will appear in stores before the end of the year.