I’m going to propose something to you in a moment, but I’m going to ask for a little bit of cooperation and patience from you first. I want to do a little experiment with you. This is going to be a bit of a different “rant” from what you might be used to. Instead of doing the ranting, I’m going to help place you, the reader, in the position of being ranted at or about. This is either going to be interesting, or really lame… I haven’t decided yet. Okay, now that you’ve (hopefully) agreed to give me your cooperation and patience, let’s try this…
As enthusiasts of video games and the gaming industry, pretty much everybody has their own likes, dislikes, biases, opinions, etc. It’s completely normally, really. What we’re going to do today, is play a little game of “Try On These Shoes.” Instead of “Jesus Christ, Nintendo… I could have CRAPPED a better E3 press conference than THAT!” I’d like you to take a moment and mentally step into Reggie’s shows… heck, even Cammie’s shoes (and no, this isn’t devolving into a gender-bending foot fetish, you can still be a guy stepping into “guy shoes” of someone holding Cammie’s position at Nintendo.)
Now this isn’t a pie in the sky, let’s pet a unicorn and the magic rainbow will make everything better game, this is you… being the front person for your company, having less control over what your company has to offer, but quite a bit of control on HOW you offer it. Describe to me, in a reply to this post, how you would’ve handled the Nintendo press conference. Would you have mentioned up front that the Mario, Zelda and Pikmin teams were working but their projects are so far out they can’t be shown? Would you have scrapped the goofy “jam session” on stage for Wii Music? Would you have showed Wii Music at all? I’m curious to hear what YOU would do.
Many people think Microsoft stole the show with their E3 press conference, while others think a few things could’ve gone off a little better. So I say, here… try on these shoes. Would you have rolled with the Bungie announcement? Would you have made the bold promise to outsell the PS3 this generation knowing that if you don’t do it, your claim to fame would be eating crow in front of the world? Would you have put a different spin to the Xbox Experience and casual gaming topics or avoided the awkward You’re In The Movies segment?
Jack Tretton surely had some sweaty shoes that day… pretend we just dried them out; now put them on. Would you have dropped all the PS2 coverage? Would you have shown more games being played live during the conference? Would you have brought in third party developers to show off their games on your system? Surely you would’ve opted not to make fun of (now dead) Jack Palance…
Too bad a PC Gaming didn’t have a major press conference, there’s not too much to say there. PC Gamers will get (probably slightly better) versions of a lot of the console games, but it’s a bit harder to lump all PC development up into a single press conference like it is for closed-systems like consoles.
Feel free to tackle, one, multiple, or all these shoes and reply with what you would’ve (realistically) done different. You may get bonus points for including Doc or Dave in your answer since they were at 2/3 of those press conferences. Come to think of it, the one they didn’t go to was the one that bombed… coincidence? You decide. Whatever you do, try to paint your picture as detailed as possible. Detail out the changes.
The last thing… the part that makes this whole thing fit in the “rant” column… the rest of us get to comment on YOUR E3 showing. We’ll be critiquing YOU. If you do a lousy job, we’ll be making animated GIF images of YOU playing air-drums or talking about cute puppies (well, at least we’ll be pretending to.) We’ll be discussing YOU showing off Gears of War 2 with a controller searching for a signal… Are you up to it? We’ll see. Give it a shot, it’s all in the name of fun. Now… try on these shoes!
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
I didn’t have a problem with what was presented just how it was presented. Microsoft did fine, altho the conversations with devs were obviously scripted and the Guitar Hero guy was embarrassing “METALLICA!” Sony did fine, best way to present a boring presentation, by making it interesting.
Now nintendo, i would NEVER EVER start a press conference by talking about how my son loves me but not just because i make video games then have photos of my (nintendo paid) skiing holiday and a photo of my son wearing a pink top.
I would then make sure that the drumer for WiiMusic could actually drum along with the game to make it look good.
I bet if they got rid of that women and it was all Reggie then people wouldn’t be moaning as much, shes like one of your mates parents who talk to your in a weird way because your not theirs so your retarded by their standards so you just want to smack them.
LOL @ the last sentence! Hilarious…
I didn’t actually watch the Microsoft press conference, so I won’t say too much about it, but I would have cut down on the amount of time spent showing off At The Movies, Lips etc. even from the liveblogging they came across as a car wreck and a particularly long one at that. I wouldn’t have put anything in their place because it seemed pretty long anyway.
As for Nintendo, I would have kept Cammie but cut down her role to just one or two sections. I’d still mention Mario and Zelda but also show off games (third party if necessary) which would have appealed to hardcore gamers, even if they were more adult oriented.
Instead of the completely pointless part where Cammie mentioned they were thinking about roles for the DS for travellers in new cities, I would have had Reggie say that they were considering storage solutions.
Would keep the Wii Music, though cut down the length of time the drummer got, but make sure that it ended with something for the hardcore. With the Wii Music it just seemed to be rubbing how big a letdown the show had been in the faces of the big fans. Had they ended on something else then it would have least left them feeling as if Nintendo do still care about them. At the end of the day, the casual/mainstream audience don’t care how the show ends because it all ends up broken down into relevant chunks on TV, the hardcores have watched the live feed or read the live blog and know everything.
I actually think the Sony press conference “won” so I wouldn’t change that much. One thing I would do though is to pick a big game from both the PSP and PS3 (Infamous is one possibility as it hasn’t already been seen by everyone, like Resistance 2, Killzone 2 or LBP. Although I don’t know what state it’s in), give it a few minutes more attention, perhaps demo it. A lot of people seem to have criticised the Sony conference for just being a jumble of (allbeit good) games. Had particular titles been given a focus then I think the press conference would have been perceived as stronger.