Has anyone else watched it? So far I think its been great. Much better than anything I’ve seen tried before.
Adam Sessler hit the nail on the head of my problem with the Xbox 360. Flat out the MTV special, and the Microsoft E3 presentation (complete with a STAGED crowd) alienated me. I’m a hard core gamer, Xbox owner, and Microsoft pulled all the stops out to say “We do not care about you as a customer. You aren’t cool”
Yet a couple of good hardcore games and you’ll want one anyway. Meanwhile, by marketing to the pre-teen and hipster demographic, they expand their market greatly. Welcome to sound business sense. ;)
With launch 5 months away and they are lacking in that department.
I watched the one Tuesday and have the other days set to record.
I liked it. Having never been to an E3, but always wanting to go, it was cool to see that kind of thing.
One things that surprised me was how all the people running the presentations seemed out of their element a little bit. I just assumed they would be marketing slicksters or something. Some of the guys from the Sony one had really thick accents and the Microsoft cheeseball sitting down on the floor in the middle of his spiel was just ridiculous. I was embarassed for him.
olaf
I’m DVRing them. Besides the one retarded skit that I just fast forwarded through, and having annoying personalties other then Morgan and Adam, it’s alright.
Oh, and they’re absolutely gushing about the PS3, which is kind of annoying, but oh well.
With launch 5 months away and they are lacking in that department.[/quote]
Err… so? That means they’ll never happen?
Do you think Microsoft really cares if you buy at day one or in a year? Their margins on hardware increase as you wait. And since you wouldn’t have been buying software anyway…
As long as they reach enough critical mass to keep developers attracted (and for both MS and Sony this is a relatively low number because they have the clout, either through reputation or through sheer $$$, to keep developers on board), when you buy is only a blip in the radar.
Especially if they can trade one of you for 3 people who have to have one with the Puff Daddy faceplate.
Considering their marketing, I don’t think they care if anyone who games ever buys one at all.
I agree the coverage is excellent. The Running of the Nerds skits was stupid but it was totally made up for by Sessler’s interview with J Allard.
And I thought they had a great point about how MS was all about reaching 1 Billion gamers (whatever that means) and reaching out to Velocity Girl and other real casuals yet all the games 360 highlighted are relatively hard core. Who ended up showing off a game more likely to reach Velocity Girl and all of those casuals? Nintendo with Nintendogs.
Personally, I’d prefer they let Victor Lucas take on the lead role instead of Adam Sessler - it would be much more watchable for me.
Vic would no doubt handle it like a pro.
I watched about an hour and a half of it and thought it was pretty well done (except the Running of The Nerds).
That car wars type game, Full Throttle I think it was called, they showed looked fun if the enviornments are really going to be destructable, and not just select parts.
Think the cr game was called Full Auto.
I thoroughly enjoyed all two hours of Tueday’s roundtable discussion of the conferences. Some interesting points were raised, and aside from the PS3 drooling(cmon, who wasn’t?) the group remained grounded in reality skeptical of what was handed to them, delivering details that webcasters such as myself would not have picked up on. I really expected a softball “E3 for Dummies” special, thankfully we got honest, genuine, and sincere commentary.
Wednesday was a total downer for me. I knew trouble was brewing the moment Marlon and Shawn Wayans useless cameo became priority number 1 to kick the show off. The scripted humor that erupted before, during, or between segments was banal, and I was ready to shut off the TV when that “running of the nerds” segment aired.
The Cliffy B interview and the J. Allard cross-examination were the only memorable highlights. I feel I’ve already seen most of what E3 can offer already, but Tuesday night was enjoyable enough to give today’s broadcast another watch.
Oh and I must say Gamespot’s LIVE coverage has been a real highlight for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the Civ 4 and Age 3 demonstrations, and I even think their kickoff 20minute coverage of Mario Baseball single-handedly sold me on a purchase. Very pleasant experience watching their webstreams.
But do they really need to market to the hardcore gamers? That’s the smallest demographic and they know most of the hardcore will either buy it on release because they have to own every system or wait a bit to see the quality of the games before making a decision. Marketing to the masses makes loads more sense. Besides, is it really any different than every other past console release? I mean, it’s different in the fact that games are more popular now and more likely to be played by “non-gamers”, but it seems pretty much the same otherwise in regards to hype and whatnot.
If you think marketing a game console to those who don’t like video games is a great idea, I have 3 letters for you:
3DO
Oh want 3 more letters?
CDI
Its more “how are they going to execute this vision?” They keep talking up about how the 360 is going to appeal to people who rarely pick up the controller and I don’t think they showed that. Offering mini-games through the dashboard, video and text messaging, and all is neat but what kind of really casual gamer is going to play $300 for something they are already getting for free on their PC? What’s the incentive? The marketplace thing is interesting and everyone likes to bring up all of the content created for the Sims, but wouldn’t people creating art and mods for a 2D game be a whole lot simpler than for a 3D game?
It was just a mixed message- an hour of “this is the console that will truly break through to the masses and appeal to everybody” followed by clips of a bunch of games that wouldn’t appeal to these masses. This presentation would have been best saved for a year or two into the Xbox 360s life- more of a “okay, we’ve captured the hardcore market and here is our vision for going beyond that.”
I didn’t say marketing to people who don’t like games. I said don’t play. I think their intent is to reach the people who don’t play because they don’t think video games are cool, as if they can show them that games are indeed cool. Whether they’re doing this effectively or not isn’t my point. I’m just saying it’s not really their job to reach the people who will buy the thing anyway, who incidently, are the same people who probably don’t pay any attention to market hype in the first place.
Perhaps MS and Sony are afraid to admit the market might be maturing and that there might not be a big new influx of gamers. Thus the hyperbole about reaching the non-player and yet the same old gametypes.
I think that women are really the only big segment of untapped potential out there, and of all the gaming companies Nintendo may have the most luck there.
I found both Morgan and Adam to be MUCH less annoying when not reading from a script. The coverage on Monday and Tuesday was outstanding, Wednesday was mediocre in my opinion. I could do without the stupid skits like The Running of the Nerds, but that interview Sessler did with J. Allard was excellent.
Has there been any mention that the PS3 press conference videos that they were all ga-ga over was all pre-rendered?