Tue 2 Jun 2009
For the second year in a row, I’m posting my views on this year’s E3 for your reading and trolling pleasure.
As with last year, I could care less about portable devices and so will only mention any console related info that got my attention. If I left anything out, it’s because I don’t care about it, and you shouldn’t either. This year promised to be a better show but honestly ended up being almost as lackluster as last year’s. Don’t these companies realize all that gamers really want are great new games? Please, no more gimmicks!
It’s been two weeks since I unwrapped SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation and rushed home excited to frag. 14 days of lag, disconnections, and other online server-related annoyances. Over 330 hours of patiently waiting for the patch that will justify my day one purchase. I believe that’s almost 20,000 minutes too many.
As most of you have undoubtedly already known for a week now, my most anticipated game of this year has been delayed 1 week due to a couple of Qur’anic verses found within one of its songs. Being a Muslim who has been absorbing every little bit of information about Little Big Planet since its announcement, the delay was almost surreal to me.
Today at E3 Microsoft had their press conference, it is clear that Microsoft is not doing too great these days as analysts all agree that it is a matter of time before the PS3 surpass it in sales. Already it has overtaken the 360 in Europe and in Japan long ago… And according to the NPD numbers the PS3 has outsold the 360 5 months in a row this year in North America. So it was obvious that they needed some kind of big announcement or strategy to keep their title now as the number one selling next-gen console in America (the Wii is NOT next gen).
It was “so close and yet so far” for Sony with the new 2.40 patch. I was very happy to hear that 2.40 will add trophies (achievements) and an in-game menu system. So excited, in fact, that I was almost ready to switch and buy PS3 versions for all my cross-platform games instead of 360 version as I’m currently doing. That is, until I heard that the XMB will not be giving users the ability to jump into games their friends are playing in or invite friends to games you’re playing. That was, by far, the feature I was looking forward to most! It’s as if the designers who work on the PS3 aren’t gamers but mediaphiles instead.
I don’t get it. A console that’s more powerful than most computers out there can’t handle browsing? How is it that the PS3 browser can run out of system memory if I have more than a few webpages open at once? What friggin sense does that make?
