Month: June 2010

E3 2010: Microsoft Press Conference

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Microsoft had the unenviable task of beginning E3’s series of press conferences, especially since the major trend for many spectators this year seemed to be the hope and the wish to be, simply put, surprised: Here at the Slowdown, we were above all looking forward to non-sequels and all-new IP.

Unfortunately, the one major announcement from Microsoft – the seemingly abrupt re-branding of “Project Natal,” a move that G4TV speculate was an extremely recent decision – had been spoiled only days before much in the same vein as Sony’s PSP Go last year. Nonentheless, the Microsoft hype train steamed forth as planned, with Senior Vice President Don Mattrick (on the left) opening up the show.

Despite first airing footage from the decidedly nondescript Call of Duty: BLOPS, the behemoth got off to a great start once Kojima Productions founder Hideo Kojima and producer Shigenobu Matsuyama (on the right) waltzed on stage to show off Metal Gear Solid: Rising in what ultimately turned out to be the most notable announcement of the whole conference.

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E3 2010 Ubisoft Press Conference

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

What decade is it again – the 1970s? I ask this for what just went on during Ubisoft’s press conference was totally psychedelic, dude, even discounting the fact that the host, Joel McHale of “The Soup,” apparently took his part in the proceedings very, very seriously and quite possibly ingested beforehand a wide assortment of magic mushrooms.

In any case, let us just linger on for a moment on these fantastic quotes I pulled from the show – a veritable checklist of games marketing bullshit:

“Games you can feel.”
“Full body experience.”
“A magic inner journey.”
“The mind and body are controllers.”
“The player is a design pillar.”
“Playing in the real world.”
“Feel the magic of my environment.”

McHale’s off-kilter performance equally reminded me of a story from CVG’s Vernon Kay, called “How NOT to host a games event” (Kay’s list delightfully also includes what can be classified as the Pong Trap.)

The host’s constant barrage of sarcastic interjections and one-liners came relatively close to Jamie Kennedy’s classic E3 2007 Activision press conference, which he started off with “This is exciting. We’re at E3 and… I just wanna say… this place is the only place… that makes the guys at ComicCon… look like Ocean’s 13.” 1)http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2007-activision/22401, instantly breaking Kay’s final rule of “Assume your audience are a bunch of closeted shut-ins.”

Another example of game-changing hosts is Jay Mohr, who single-handedly soured the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. You can watch his potty-mouthed performance at Joystiq – this was a show after which 3D Realms’ George Broussard asked for his contract terminated “so he *never* does another AIAS awards show.” 2)http://twitter.com/georgeb3dr/status/9321107453

The difference between McHale on the one hand and Kennedy and Mohr on the other, though, is that McHale actually focused on the relative ludicrousness of Ubisoft’s line-up instead of lingering on the apparent deficiencies of the crowd and the industry overall.

This minor detail made for vastly more amusing a show!

References   [ + ]

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EEEk!

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

The Electronic Entertainment Expo has crept upon us once again!

On this website, we will be following up, at the very least, on four of the major press conferences: Microsoft and Electronic Arts today, and the Nintendo and Sony on Tuesday.

We probably won’t be parroting the more generic announcements – don’t know about you, but my fingers are already worn out from scrolling thru the sudden flood of Kinect news – but anything we think is worth mentioning will certainly find its way on to the blog with some commentary to boot.

Finally, if you’re interested in watching the conferences yourself, the Gamespot live feed has been pretty reliable in the past.

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