Another year, another E3, except this year's invitation-only gala gathering felt less like a culture celebration than a carefully quarterbacked experiment in cost slashing and info recapping. Did we see much we hadn't already? Not really. Unless you count Nintendo's pseudo-aerobic "Wii Fit," this was easily one of the least engrossing E3's yet.
Not because of the scaled back setup, either. In years past, part of E3's charm was the sense that things unseen -- ostensibly great things -- would be unveiled. In 1995 at the very first E3, Sony announced its original Playstation, and Nintendo teased event-goers with specifications for its then-named "Ultra 64" (Remember? Back when everything came down to "bits"?). 1996's E3 followed with our first Super Mario 64 hands-on. 1997 brought Valve's Half-Life and Epic's Unreal engine, and then...well, then things sort of taper off. Instead of signaling sea changes, E3 became more about plugging franchises and introducing little upticks like console peripherals or expansions packs and sequels.
In 2007...
1. When is a price cut not a price cut? When it's tagged to a SKU a company plans to permanently sell out of. The 20 GB Playstation 3 bit the dust earlier this year, so when the 60 GB model dropped from $600 to $500, perhaps we should've seen this coming: For all its price-slashing bluster, it seems Sony has no plans to continue the 60 GB SKU once it's gone. And with the dearth of A-list games for the system now or through the end of 2007, the "blowout" $500 model is only worth the dough if you're a dyed-in-the-wool Blu-ray convert.
2. Sequel-itis. Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, Metroid Prime 3, Killzone 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, Unreal Tournament 3. And if you haven't heard enough about Halo 3 already, well, you heard some more. Not like we haven't been playing the game for months already (vicariously, literally, etc.). Does it look good? If you like Halo, it's...well, it's inarguably Halo. Will it sell well? Ahem, what does a bear do in the woods...
3. The Sony PSP, visually unchanged, will now officially be 33 percent lighter. Don't trip over each other reserving one or anything.
On the positive side, while Sony and Microsoft were pretty much treading water, Nintendo had more hits than misses:
4. The heavily delayed Super Mario Galaxy (ships on November 11) finally looks like it could just be the heir to Mario 64 that Mario Sunshine wasn't.
5. Metroid Prime 3. If it wasn't Wii-enabled I'd frankly be less interested, because say what you will (I'm looking at you, Nintendo fanboys) it really is possible to have too much of a good thing. That said, the new control scheme definitely captured my attention.
6. Wii Fit looks like a clever "light" aerobic injection that dovetails with the Wii's kinetic philosophy: yoga, push ups, rhythm walking, hula hooping and dozens more interactive variations on ye olde fitness video could very well augment the tectonic shift Nintendo's seems to have triggered with its engagement of this new, so-called "casual" gaming demographic.
One thing's absolutely certain: the entertainment industry is thriving. Thriving. And E3 2007 simply didn't match the sense of excitement that ought to accompany a game industry growing both domestically and globally by leaps and bounds.
Note: Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is much harder than I'm being on the conference.
