Nice little un-mentioned feature of the new 360 update in the fall: "Play from hard drive. Copy your games from the game disc and play directly from the hard drive. Not only will the drive not spin, but load times are quicker, as well. Of course, you will still need the disc in the tray to prove you own the game."
Jesus fucking Christ - so many games. So many, many, many good games....
Assuming reviews are roughly in line with realistic expectations (meaning no games with severe bugs or broken controls, etc.) I see no less than a eight games I will get on release day.
Video game whore that I am, that's a LOT - in the last year, I've bought ~40 games, but only 3 were release day purchases, the rest were way the hell after release when I could get used copies for less than $30....
Granpa, yeah, I think they changed the game from its original design where it actually was all black zombies. Doesn't make much sense to me.
"Play from hard drive. Copy your games from the game disc and play directly from the hard drive. Not only will the drive not spin, but load times are quicker, as well. Of course, you will still need the disc in the tray to prove you own the game."
Good idea. Looks like MS is taking a page out of Sony's book. Except the PS3's drive is no where near as loud as the 360's to begin with.
Ted, lol yeah I was also all about the cheaper pre-owned games before but since last year I've bought nearly every game on release day and it's going to be even more this year.
Links to some awesome video clips:
RE5 E3 trailer and MS press conference walkthrough showing online co-op:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36228.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36199.html
Fallout 3 trailer and MS press conference walkthrough:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36202.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36197.html
I am overloaded with these good games
online co-op RE5? Sign me up!
ROFL - I don't know which of those is more pointed and skewering than the rest :-P
On second thought, the one of Reggie Fils-Aime is just too brutal :-) The MS one is true but just not funny enough, and the Sony one is just sad (though true)...
hahahaha the Nintendo one is the one that cracked me up the most. Sony will pull through
lol all of them are great.
Nintendo makes me sick. I want to take Miyamoto and his goons and all their fanboys and kick them in the balls till their eyes pop out of their heads.
What's with the Nintendo hate?
Penny Arcade's writeup:
"No doubt the proprietors of Ladies' Home Journal were breathless during Nintendo's presentation, but those outside of that august body may derive less enjoyment. This is the deep-dish, delicious irony endured by of the Nintendo stalwart: to see their platform of choice ascendant, even as their bright God turns his face away. Though it contained very little sustenance for our kind, the presentation was (as is typical) a confident, refined affair. The salvo was not a failure. It was simply aimed elsewhere.
As for Sony, well, let's talk about Sony.
There is nothing I hate more than a foregone conclusion. Beneath every vicious (that is to say, factual) statement I have ever made regarding the company, there has existed the indubitable truth of their ultimate victory. This certainty extends, yea, even unto the company itself, which is why they have done so little to earn your love. The rumble-free controller with built-in batteries, the one that turns off while you're updating your console every other week, that one that inexplicably loses signal from time to time but everyone is too chivalrous to discuss it, the one that is now obsolete because two years ago they tried to save money on something they knew they would have to pay anyway - this "six axis" is the icon of a system coasting on global brand inertia. Announcing features that your competitors have had for coming up on two years does not a riveting presentation make. Exclusive PSN content (like a movie length Ratchet and Clank game, or thatgamecompany's Flower) are still the company's most compelling asset.
There are a total of two interesting, relevant announcements from these three presentations combined. The first is that Microsoft has decided, three years into the system's lifespan, that they made the wrong console. Without warning, in the middle of a presentation jutting with skewers of sizzling beef for the faithful, the entire presentation devolved into a series of gruesome outtakes from the fucking Today Show. They have seen the future, and it is the past. To that end, they have committed to a radical alteration of the user experience. I have no idea what to make of it yet, and the product as shown in in turbulent flux: this single walkthrough clearly shows as many as three versions of the future Dashboard. Gabriel tells me that the Avatars are alright. I don't know.
The second is that Square Enix has recognized it's never going to make its money back only selling Final Fantasy XIII to the Playstation. I don't think most Xbox owners really want Final Fantasy, but this is the kind of pro-consumer maneuver that we assumed would be the hallmark of this generation. You can take it as a compliment to the Xbox as a platform if you like, but it has more to do with the brutal, jungle law of the market. All it actually means is that SquareEnix has recognized the platform exists.
MAG - hilariously, "Massive Action Game" - would have made this list if Sony had shown even a frame of in-game footage. Zipper Interactive, these guys are local - I've got nothing but love for them. I firmly believe that the people who made SOCOM can deliver a multi-theater shooter on that hardware. Just like the God of War III "trailer," though - another virtually content-free pirouette - pre-rendered footage has no effect on me. In this epic context, the value of such materials was substantially less than zero. They needed something incredible, yet tangible. What we received instead was a promise of a promise of a promise."
"They have seen the future, and it is the past."
Funniest thing I've read all day.
Yeah... they needed to show some actual gameplay for God of War 3. All they did with the trailer was tell us something everyone already knew - that there will be a God of War 3. These all CGI trailers annoy me, even if they are just meant to be teasers.
My favourite trailer shown at E3 is probably for Resident Evil 5.
Yea, RE5 was one of the few things that actually showed me something, though I've be able to catch very little overall compared to most of you. INfamous is something I got excited for when announced at the last E3 - how's that looking?
Infamous looks good, but kind of generic (visuall. I'm not really into the lightning powers thing, but for an open world game it looks pretty decent.
That Penny Arcade comic is fucking pisser.
From: http://thestandard.com/news/2008/07/18/did-we-just-watch-e3-gasp-its-last-breath
The run up to this year's E3 video game conference was rife with controversy. There were companies leaving the ESA in droves, as well as companies setting up shop outside the venue to take advantage of the press without spending the money for a booth. Add in the reduction in size and the attendee limitation to press and corporate reps over the past two years and rumors about the ultimate demise of E3 start swirling.
There were no huge game announcements, and Microsoft didn't even bother having Bungie show up to talk about the next Halo release, claiming that the company wanted to "shorten the presentation." Crave points out that there are no solid plans announced for next year's show, and three studio execs (EA CEO John Riccitello, Ubisoft president Laurent Detoc, and Sega of America's president Simon Jeffery) all expressed displeasure when talking to the San Francisco Chronicle.
With so many studios leaving the ESA and retailers skipping the show, there isn't much left to the show. Without the gamers, the show seems like a big press conference, and based on the announcements this week, the emphasis is on the consoles and not the games.
As the consoles add features that leave them looking more and more identical, the games will go back to being the driving force in the industry, and they'll need a venue for launches. Will it still be E3?
From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/18/BUR811R133.DTL&feed=rss.technology
E3 is in a bit of an identity crisis. After drawing 60,000 people two years ago, it was downsized to about 4,000 people last year and moved from its usual home at the Los Angeles Convention Center to a handful of hotels in Santa Monica. This year, it returned to the convention center, but the feel was still small, maybe 5,000 attendees. The famed "booth babes" were nowhere to be seen.
The downsizing had to do with money (some of the biggest E3 pavilions were $6 million to $10 million) and the perception by some that the industry has arrived and no longer needs to trumpet its achievements.
But in talking to executives and analysts throughout the week, it seems like E3 might be poised to make a return of sorts to its glory days next year. To be sure, it will not replicate the excess of E3s past. But there is a sense that after this year's quiet affair, the event needs a lot more spectacle befitting an industry that is experiencing huge growth and record revenues.
"I hate E3 like this," said John Riccitiello, Electronics Arts' CEO. "Either we need to go back to the old E3, or we'll have to have our own private events."
Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft North America, concurred. "E3 this year is terrible," he said. "The world used to come to E3. Now it's like a pipe-fitters show in the basement."
Sega of America's president, Simon Jeffery, said he doesn't want to go back to the days when he would spend $5 million on E3. But he said there should be some more flash to bring back retailers, who have abandoned the show.
Mike Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association, which puts on E3, is listening and said his group will continue to tweak E3 to the tastes of its members. He said it's likely E3 will grow next year, though it's unclear by how much.
"We just need to decide where the dial needs to go," Gallagher said.
Building E3 up again may help return some momentum to the event, which many people said was light on news this year. Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities dismissed E3 even before the show began because of its timing in mid-July, which came during some companies' quiet periods. It's also too close to the fall selling season, so most publishers were not able to keep many games under wraps until E3.