[Wrapup] What was Announced at E3'08

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What was Announced at E3'08

 

Wrapup: What Sony Announced at E3

 

All three press conferences have come and gone, and Sony ended with a few bangs. We saw some new game announcements, updates on existing ones, and hints of what's to come for the PlayStation Network and Home.

 

Jack Tretton started the show off with a new trailer for Resistance 2, showing a large Chimera monster destroying a building as the player ran through it. The conference went on to cleverly present Sony's sales numbers using a custom-made LittleBigPlanet stage to demonstrate them rather than a stuffy old PowerPoint presentation. Cute move. As part of the LittleBigPowerPoint, Sony unveiled the new greatest hits line-up for PlayStation 3, starting with 10 of the most popular titles for the price of $29.99. Finally, LittleBigPlanet was confirmed for October of this year.

 

Moving on to the PlayStation 2, the company talked up the 130 new titles coming this year, along with a new bundle that will include Lego Batman and the animated movie Justice League: The New Frontier. Not to be outdone, the PlayStation Portable is getting a new bundle pack with Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, a voucher for the downloadable game Echochrome, a 1GB memory stick, and a UMD of National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. Finally, the PlayStation 3 is getting double the storage space with an 80GB unit for $399, the previous price for the 40GB model.

 

On the PlayStation Network side, we got the first (official) confirmation of Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty, a PSN downloadable title that builds on the story of Ratchet & Clank Future. It promises more puzzle and adventure elements built upon the same basic Ratchet feel, in a bite-sized game for $14.99. Tretton also promised that Home is still on the way, along with teasing that trophies will be rewarding in "unique ways."

 

For video entertainment, the company outlined GTTV from Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, and said it will go live August 1. And of course, the company outlined its talked-about video download service, which goes live tonight and will grant access to a wide variety of TV shows and movies. One pleasant surprise is that content downloaded from the PlayStation Store on your PC or PS3 can also be transferred to your PlayStation Portable for on-the-go viewing.

 

Tretton then brought it back around to the games, talking up a new Resistance PSP game along with a few other portable installments of console counterparts, while comic book artist Jim Lee showed off DC Universe Online with a new trailer. Tretton went on to whet Kratos fans' appetites with a God of War 3 teaser, and then finally wrapped up the presentation with the announcement of the new MAG: Massive Action Game. Silly acronym aside, the game's title is dead serious, promising 256-player battles composed of 8-person squads. Squad commanders will be promoted based on "leadership abilities," bringing a certain strategic element into play. Those squads will get into both skirmishes with other squads and more massive warfare during matches.

 

So, is it the "year of the PS3," as Jack Tretton (and our own EGM) have claimed? Did the press conference impress? Let us know.

 

E3 2008 -- the game industry's biggest convention (arguably) -- is happening all this week! Check out E3.1UP.COM for news, previews, podcasts, videos, blogs, and more direct from the Los Angeles Convention Center.

E3 2008: Nintendo Press Conference Roundup

Nintendo's E3 press conference is over, and if you were following it on our live stream (and you were, right?), consider this wrap-up a refresher. While Microsoft focused plenty of time on new interfaces and functionality options on Monday, Nintendo was unsurprisingly all about the games: Animal Crossing: City Folk, Wii Music, and Wii Sports Resort are their big announcements for the Wii, and the DS gets another dose of Guitar Hero: On Tour along with -- maybe the biggest surprise of the conference -- Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

 

But this isn't exactly a staggering litany of new game announcements -- in fact, Nintendo deliberately kept the list of game demos short while assuring that it would be "impossible" to fit in showings for all of the games currently in the works for Wii and DS. Still, even with the short list of games on the schedule, they are mostly games we've already heard of or seen before -- including the two most exciting Wii games shown, Animal Crossing and Wii Music.

 

Animal Crossing was shown first, with a video of gameplay footage accompanied by series producer Katsuya Eguchi outlining some of the new features. The biggest addition also accounts for the new subtitle -- unlike previous versions of Animal Crossing, City Folk lets you venture out from your tranquil village and visit a (relatively) bustling city, where you'll find an auction house, clothing store, academy, and a beauty salon (which lets you transform your character into a Mii). The game also features online play, which seems to be similar to the online play in the DS version and pretty short of the "Animal Crossing MMO" rumor that has circulated for a while. Nintendo also showed off a new "WiiSpeak" peripheral, which is a community microphone that lets anyone in the same room speak into it.

 

Wii Music closed the show, with Shigeru Miaymoto himself appearing on stage and playing the saxophone with a Wii Remote. Wii Music, of course, was first revealed at E3 2006 as a mere tech demo, but today's showing is a fully formed game, with over 50 instruments including drums, sax, piano, violin, guitar, marimba, and various percussion instruments. You use the Wiimote, Nunchuk and Balance Board to play them, and apparently, success is based more on simply mimicking the motions of playing instruments rather than any musical talent. We should have more impressions of Wii Music soon, so stay tuned.

 

Also demoed was Wii Sports Resort, a sequel to the Wii pack-in and the first game to use the Motion Plus add-on (which comes with the game). Wii Sports Resort's activities are beach-themed, with onstage demonstrations including playing Frisbee with a dog, riding a Jet Ski, and, um, sword fighting. Maybe that's not a typical beach activity, but with the help of the Motion Plus add-on, it's the direct, 1-to-1 motion-controlled sword-fighting game everyone's been waiting for since the Wii was first announced. The game is due for release next spring.

 

The DS got an equal amount of time devoted to it, and easily the biggest announcement is Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, set for release this holiday season. It may not be as fancy as GTA4, but it'll be great to see the überviolent GTA series sharing shelf space with Nintendogs. Details are scarce, but as the name implies, Chinatown Wars focuses on the Asian Triad crime syndicates of Liberty City. Rockstar Leeds is developing the game in conjunction with Rockstar North, and it will of course make use of the touch screen for vehicle and character controls.

 

Almost as surprising is the announcement of Guitar Hero: On Tour -- Decades, but mostly because the follow-up to the first On Tour is coming so soon. As usual, not many details were revealed, but Decades will supposedly be released in different versions, and you will be able to swap songs between them. Why that's a necessary addition to the series is hard to say right now, but hopefully we'll get a better understanding of how song-swapping works soon.

 

Other Wii games shown include Shaun White Snowboarding, with Shaun White himself playing the Balance Board-enabled game. Leaning left and right on the board guided his virtual boarder, and pressing his weight down on the it lifted him into the air off of ramps and halfpipes. White was also holding a Wii Remote while he played, and perhaps it's used to pull of tricks, but it was hard to make out exactly how the motions translated to the gameplay.

 

A short trailer also showed new footage of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party, and Call of Duty: World at War. Really, the only notable feature shown is a co-op mode for Call of Duty -- one player controls the action on screen, but two additional players can add support by shooting enemies with their own Wii Remotes (which seems almost lightgun-like in execution). On the DS, Spore: Creatures and Pokémon Rangers: Shadows of Almia were also shown along with a couple of applications: one that gives you valuable airport info like flight times, nearby restaurants, and weather reports, and the DS cookbook, making its way from Japan to the U.S.

 

All in all, it may have lacked the technological and multimedia pizzazz of Microsoft's E3 showing, and, yeah, it kind of also lacked any big-time game announcements -- everyone saw the titles announced coming from a mile away. But you can't deny that Nintendo certainly showed up at E3, can you? So, any thoughts? Wish they had more games to show off, or are you satisfied with the announcements made today? Leave a comment and share your thoughts, partner.

 

E3 2008 -- the game industry's biggest convention (arguably) -- is happening all this week! Check out E3.1UP.COM for news, previews, podcasts, videos, blogs, and more direct from the Los Angeles Convention Center.

 

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