The Richter Scale^®

Even though only media and exhibitors are presently permitted on the show floor here at E3 (at least for the next half hour) the floor feels crowded in some spots.

Nowhere is that more obvious than at the Nintendo booth, where people are standing in line for half an hour or more (myself included) to get their hands onto the Nintendo Wii controller and games for a test spin. Lines are expected to get up to 2-3 hours long when the seething masses get in.

The line for the Wii is a sharp contrast to the non-existant wait over at the Sony booth where about a dozen playable PS3 titles are being demonstrated. I tried my hand at several - Genji, Warhawk, and Resistance: Fall of Man.

The PS3 controller does not feel appreciably different from the PS2 controller - it might be marginally heavier. The demo units were also connected via a USB cable, while the final models will be wireless.

Gameplay is reasonable for titles which are only partially complete. Graphics are excellent, as expected. I spoke to one of the level designers for Resistance, and he was raving about the power of the PS3. He was telling me that on the PS2, as a game gets close to the release date it’s typical to start simplifying levels by removing various graphics elements which contribute to slower response and rendering times.

Not so with the PS3. If anything, he is able to throw more complexity at it as he goes on, to help create even more realism. One example he gave was of a wall in an underground level where he designed a detailed bolt and washer, and then has 300 of these visually “holding” a wall in place. His work has certainly paid off in what I saw during my playing of Resistance both in Mission mode and in Deathmatch.

Only one of the titles Sony was showing offered support for the 6DOF feature of their controller - a feature which more and more appears to be a bit contrived as a form of thunder stealing (from Nintendo). Lending credence to that is that only Warhawk had any support for the feature. And the PS3 is only about six months from launch.

Gameplay with Warhawk was actually not as bad as it looked during the Sony press conference on Monday, but it certainly took a bit of getting used to tilting the controller to fly a plane instead of using the thumbstick. Once I got the hang of it, it did feel a bit more intuitive though. I think a big hurdle for at least experienced gamers will be the expectation that since the PS3 controller looks and feels like a PS2 controller, games will use it the same.

That’s where Nintendo gets it right - by creating such novel and different controllers there are no expectations or controller experience response to overcome. You have to learn to use the Wii controllers from scratch.

The Wii remote is remarkably lightweight, but I suspect that there were no batteries installed and that power was supplied by the tether. It requires that a sensor strip be mounted on the TV to properly sense the infrared input.

My first Wii game was a skeet and duck shooting game to help demonstrate the use of the Wii remote as a pointer. The Wii remote was pointed at the screen and controlled a crosshair and the trigger on the remote was used to fire the gun. The use of the controller in this fashion with the sensor strip is a step up from light pen sensors in gun controllers in the sense that it works with any kind of display (light pen guns are limited to CRT displays), but the downside appears to be a slight sluggishness in response. Perhaps that’s only on the development systems we were playing on and it will be improved in the released version of the Wii. That said, it was pretty easy to use, and I just barely beat the demo gal.

Next I tried Excite Truck, a racing game. In this game the Wii controller was held lengthwise parallel to the screen and tilting the controller left and right would steer the truck I was “driving” in the direction tilted in. Same controller, but completely different use.

Next was H.A.M.M.E.R., where I finally got to use the Nunchuk part of the controller. The nunchuk plugs into the Wii remote to get its power and presumably to use its transceiver. It’s also the device on which a thumbstick/joystick is located, and in this game it was used to move the main character while the Wii remote was used to aim (using the infrared driven crosshair) and use the weapon - a big ass hammer. The Wii remote was also used to super slam the hammer as well as swing the hammer around, all by wrist and arm motion. Again yet another different use for the Wii controllers.

The graphics I saw for the Wii are not nearly as awe inspriring as those on the PS3, but that again could be the result of the titles involved. One thing that was noticable in all of the dozen Wii titles I looked at, though, were jagged edges. No apparent anti-aliasing. I will wait for production units before making my final call on graphics quality, however.

But for game control novelty and ingenious game design and game play, the Nintendo Wii appears to win hands down.

Today is the official opening of the E3 show here at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The last couple of days of press conferences have been merely a prelude - but an interesting one.

The media had early access to the exhibit floor at 9am, 2 hours before the general admission of the masses - thousands of whom had already lined up to be first to get in.

The Nintendo press conference today was followed by the Microsoft press conference, held in the Graumann Theatre (formerly Mann’s Chinese Theater - a well known movie landmark) next door to the Kodak Theater.

In contrast to last year’s Xbox 360 launch, this year’s press conference was a bit more mature and polished and less cutesy. Certainly the start was a stunner, with a nearly 5 minute live demonstration of the forthcoming Xbox 360 title “Gears of War”. In one word, “Wow!”.

Peter Moore of Microsoft (his official title is “Corporate Vice President, Interactive Entertainment Business, Entertainment and Devices Division” - what a mouthful!) came out after that to give a summary of both where Microsoft has been with the Xbox 360 (and indicated that supply shortages are behind them now), and where it was going.

The future holds a number of interesting things, including 160 titles available by the end of the year - and we saw video footage of a number of them. On the hardware side, Microsoft is working on an HD-DVD add-on drive which attaches to the Xbox 360 via USB and can be used to play HD-DVD movies (of course), a wireless headset, a wireless steering wheel and gas pedal/clutch input device to go with racing games, and a USB camera device. All of these are due by year end.

On the Xbox Live front, Microsoft is working with developers to bring a large number of old arcade classics, along the lines of Pacman, Frogger, Defender, etc., to Xbox Live Arcade in the coming weeks and months. On the Xbox Live Marketplace end of things, there are now over 1,000 items of downloadable content available.

Peter Moore also delved into remerchandising games playable under Windows under the “Games for Windows” moniker, and stressed that the Vista operating system would be the best operating system ever for ease of use for game players.

But the real big news, which in my mind eclipsed everything else Microsoft had to say - and brought to us by none other than Bill Gates himself, was that Xbox Live will be broadening its scope to encompass both PCs running the forthcoming Windows Vista and mobile devices (e.g. cell phones).

They offered several examples of this sort of interaction, including an Xbox 360 player of a new game called Shadowrun challenging a Windows Vista user playing the same game on his PC to a match, Gamer Cards being portable between PCs, mobile phones, and Xbox 360 consoles, and all Gamer Card-related content moving freely between them. This includes, for example, a gamer playing a game like Shadowrun at the office (during a break, of course) and having any achievements gained during the day available automatically when he goes home at night to play his Xbox 360 version of Shadowrun (and yes - that would unfortunately be two copies of Shadowrun he had to purchase).

“One user interface. One identity. One friends list. One message center. One marketplace.” - that’s how Bill Gates presented Live Anywhere. And it’s something that neither Sony nor Nintendo can offer, since neither has the platform breadth Microsoft offers. Microsoft can leverage its control of the Windows operating system by integrating this technology into Vista, and to a smaller extent, do the same in the mobile market where they have a much smaller operating systems presence. However, in the mobile market, their plan is to offer Live Anywhere support on as many mobile devices as possible. Windows Mobile is not a requirement, and they are working on Java and Brew implementations too.

And that portability applies to games purchased from Xbox Live Arcade (at least for ones which Microsoft owns the intellectual property), such as Zuma, for example. If a user (identified by a given Gamer Card) buys Zuma on the Xbox 360, he will be entitled to play Zuma on his PC or his mobile device at no extra cost.

It should be noted that the design of Live Anywhere is such that only one device can be signed in at a time with a particular Gamer Card, and that the newest login with a Gamer Card kicks off any existing active login.

The idea of cross platform access to a single identity, and the ability to build that identity (and reputation) across a multitude of devices - each with its own best suited location and time for use, is immensely appealing.

Until now I had no compelling reason to want to upgrade to Windows Vista anytime soon. However, with Live Anywhere, my resistance is weakening, and I may repurpose some old hardware and get some new hardware to create a Windows Vista box just to try this all out. And I got the sense I was not the only one.

After the Live Anywhere announcement had the audience buzzing, Peter Moore closed the presentation another big buzz generator - a trailer for Halo 3. Master Chief will apparently be back in 2007 (see images above) and I (and my kids) will be waiting impatiently.

It’s been a very busy day, filled with Nintendo and Microsoft gaming news and announcements. As I have an early start tomorrow, let me offer just the highlights and some observations now, and try and get more photos from the day up later in the week or over the weekend.

The “Nintendo media conference”, as it was dubbed, was held at the Kodak Theatre - the same grand theatre in which the Academy Awards take place.

After both a performance of a computer animated orchestra conducted by Shigeru Miyamoto and a video introducing the new name (Wii) for the console formerly known as the Nintendo Revolution, Nintendo’s General Manager, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of marketing Reggie Fils-Aime explained the new name to the audience.

While his explanation was merely a reiteration of what’s on Nintendo’s web site, he did poke fun at the name by thanking all the people who had written to Nintendo in support of the new name - all two of them. He used that as a launching point to explain that innovators are often put upon and criticized.

The highlight of the rest of the Wii presentation, which consisted mainly of video footage of forthcoming games, were several live demonstrations of the Wii Remote (a hand held, tilt-sensitive controller with built-in speaker) and the so-called “numchuk” (after the martial arts weapon, which it resembles visually) - another hand held, tilt sensitive controller with a thumbstick.

Contrary to the awkward game play I witnessed yesterday at the Sony press conference with the two handed 6DOF controller for the PS3, the use of the Nintendo controller pair seemed almost elegant, with Nintendo taking the approach of designing games specifically to take advantage of the new controllers. This contrasts to Sony’s first demo of Warhawk (which admittedly was just a technology demonstration) in which an existing title and user interface was retrofitted to support the tilt sensing in Sony’s controller.

Among the titles demonstrated at the Nintendo event were RedSteel, Wii Sport’s Tennis, and a new Zelda game (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) to be shipped at launch.

And speaking of launch, Nintendo was just as cagey with details as they were last year. No mention of price was made of the Wii - just that it would be “affordable” (and what a relative term that is!) and that it would be in people’s homes in the 4th quarter of 2006 (I presume that’s the calendar quarter they were talking about).

One other item that Nintendo elaborated on was that the Wii console would remain in a standby state even when turned off, and during this standby state would be on-line accessible for doing downloads of content, updates, etc. They called this feature “Wii Connect 24”.

With few exceptions (as outlined above), the Nintendo conference was mostly feel good fluff with little real substance, with the expected cheers from the Nintendo fanboys in the attending “media” at most every turn.

One topic which was conspicuously absent, especially in light of Sony and Microsoft reiterating their support for compatibility with old and new systems alike (more on the Microsoft approach in another blog post), was any detailed mention of Nintendo’s previously stated support for GameCube, GameBoy, and NES games on the Wii. There were a few passing mentions of the “virtual console”, but that was all.

There was also a whole section of the presentation dedicated to the Nintendo DS, new DS titles, and the forthcoming Nintendo DS Lite - none of it was particularly new, however.

That said, Nintendo’s approach to console gaming should be lauded. They have put themselves in a whole different category with both their innovative input devices (it’s really one device with two parts) as well as with games meant to take full advantage of that device. This positioning leaves Sony and Microsoft battling it out as the centerpiece of the living room, with Nintendo taking the high road - not as a direct competitor, but as a different type of entertainment appliance in the living room.

I can certainly see my children (and myself as a result), actively using the Nintendo Wii - specifically because it requires active and physical input when we need to burn some energy, and then switch to the Xbox 360 or Sony PS3 to become inactive couch potatoes intent on creating large swaths of animated destruction with non-calorie-burning flicks of our thumbs on joysticks and the occasional button press or trigger pull.

Both types of gaming have their place, and I predict that it will not be uncommon in future years to see people with both a Nintendo Wii and another more full featured entertainment console (with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD support built in) coexisting in the same living room.

Last post for the night, otherwise I’ll not make it to the Nintendo conference in the morning.

At the Sony PS3 press conference, we were shown a large number of demos and video clips of games (not clear how fabricated they were though).

What struck me the most was that perhaps half of all the titles shown were sequels to similar titles on other platforms. That’s a little depressing. One would figure that with a completely new platform with the power of the PS3, new games would be written to take advantage of the platform, instead of old games being repurposed (maybe with some new levels).

The only real innovations we were shown were a new battle card game which uses the Eye Toy, by the name of “The Eye of Judgement” and the use of a Sony PSP as a game output device in a Formula One racing game. The PSP was used to output the contents of a virtual “side mirror” in the race car. (See below for images from both.)

Other titles that look interesting, at least to me, are Eight Days, Lair, and an as yet unnamed title from Naughty Dog. The video clip for Final Fantasy XIII was visually grand, but my experience with numerous Final Fantasy games on the PS2 have been fraught with annoyance at choppy game play, and a back story I’m just not familiar with, but somehow expected to know.

I have no doubt that there will be some killer games out when the PS3 launches, but I am mindful of the fact that the graphics capabilities and playability of the latest PS2 games are in many ways amazingly better than those available with the PS2 at launch over six years ago as developers find new ways to take advantage of old hardware.

The same will undoubtedly be true with PS3 games. There is enormous complexity in the PS3 architecture, and games at launch will likely only be brushing the surface of what the PS3 can really do with properly tuned software.

Electronics Arts was one of several developers brought onto stage at the Sony PS3 press conference several hours ago. Larry Probst, chairman and CEO of EA, indicated that the company had 10 titles in the works for the PS3, including Fight Night 3, Medal of Honor: Airborne, NBA 07, Tiger Woods 07, and Need for Speed.

A demo was giving of something called “You Cap” (a more personalized and personable version of MoCap - motion capture), featuring a Tiger Woods simulacrum (see below) offering very realistic facial and body expressions on command, in real time, on a PS3.

Less impressive was a demonstration of NBA 07. First we were treated to a comparison of procedural awareness, footwork, and responsiveness between simulated basketball players on the PS2 vs. the PS3. That comparison showed a significant different.

However, when two EA staffers played a “live” version of NBA 07, the results were less than stellar. While on a per frame basis, the rendering was crisp, and lighting good, all the great words on responsiveness and footwork we had just been showered with seemed to have disappeared. Game play was jumpy and erratic, with the two basketball characters seemingly teleporting between frames. Granted, this game won’t ship until November at the earliest, but after their PS2/PS3 comparison, the demo was a real dud.

Below are some photos taken during the presentation of Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4 video clip.

The video clip ends with an old Snake putting a gun into his mouth, followed by a sound of a gun going off and the screen being washed solid red. Hmmm. Wonder what they are trying to imply. Probably will have an “M” rating based on that alone, never mind the violence and gore.

Below are images from the demonstration of the new wireless PS3 6DOF (6 degree of freedom) controller. Pictured is the controller itself, which looks pretty much like a PS2 controller, and then two scenes of the controller’s tilt being used to control the increasingly famous Sony rubber ducky.

The idea of a 6DOF controller built into a standard console controller is intriguing. However, in demonstrating the device in a game (a specially modified version of combat flight simulator Warhawk, the control of the jet using the controller tilt seemed very difficult and cumbersome.

I think of how it is I play video games. I rest my elbows and/or arms on my thighs, and with the exception of some spontaneous body English (typically in response to something jumping out at me in game on the screen), I don’t move the controller very much, but do typically have it at a comfortable angle for my hands.

Adding the controller’s orientation to the equation of controlling a character’s actions in a game would seem to make game control very challenging and complicated indeed. I would hope that game developers would make 6DOF input optional, or at least selectable between thumbsticks and 6DOF input.

On the bright side, the 6DOF input mechanism would mean couch potatoes like myself would give various seldom used muscles in our arms more exercise.

Following on to the story below, Sony believes they will sell 2 million units of the PS3 at launch, and 4 million by the end of 2006. See chart below.

I think these numbers are rather ambitious, especially at the price point involved, but only if one looks at the PS3 as a gaming system.

If one looks at the PS3 as a very capable Blu-Ray player, Sony’s forecasts may not be far off, and in fact may be the result of being production bound.

But, in order to convince the masses that Blu-Ray is the wave of the future in home movie entertainment, Sony and its partners will have a lot of difficult work ahead of them. This is where Sony’s experience with consumers will come into play.

It’s official at the Sony Press Conference - Sony PS3 pricing and availability has been announced.

The PS3 will ship in Japan on November 11, 2006 and everywhere else on November 17, 2006, in two configurations: one with a 20GB hard disk and the other with a 60GB hard disk.

In Japan the 20GB model will sell for 59,800 yen and the 60GB pricing will be up to retailers.

In the U.S. the 20GB model will sell for $499 (CDN$549) and the 60HB model for $599 (CDN$659).

And pricing for Europe is 499 and 599 Euros, respectively.

Photos a bit later on.