Oath

A new adventure game of course! I'd say "check out the video", since I've heard that it looks great, but it keeps crashing both Firefox and Explorer for me.

Yeah, this has been talked about elsewhere, but without knowing their price-point it's hard to make a guess. If they're going in at $249, which has been rumored a lot and mentioned in some magazine recently, then they might bundle two remotes right away. Lower than that, then probably not a package, since the remote is supposedly a bit expensive to produce. Two classic controllers would be a bit far-fetched though, since the VC functionality isn't something that everyone will be taking part in. That's the N64 for ya, right there. Uh... well that's what they're for anyway.

No problem, hope it was up to standard. I've never tried doing that before, so it came out a little rough, but I think I've fixed all the spelling and grammatical errors now. I think, from a gamers standpoint, this was an excellent conference. Lots of games shown, almost no numbers or lame marketing attempts made and some fun appearances by Miyamoto. I know I really enjoyed it! Edit: Hold on, just spotted this on the official site: From here. Higher resolution here.

Please just drop the price Microsoft, and I'll buy one...

This reminded me that I hadn't picked Ouendan up yet, so I actually went and ordered it right now. I found a $5 discount coupon for YesAsia, so it came to $39.99 with free shipping to Sweden. Considering a new DS game costs about $60 here, that's a bargain for me. I'll be picking up the English version too, if it really does have different songs (and I like the original). Edit: And I guess it really is different. Nintendo has a ton of content up on their site too, so check that out. Also, if you missed some of the games in the promo video, you can now check that out online too. Clicky.

Ok, hope I didn't miss too much or unload too much fluff. If you see any faults, do tell.

I'll just be recapping the video feed and browsing some forums trying to pick up stuff as we go. If you stick with the video you're not likely to miss much.

Seeing as how I've being going on and on about it, I'll do the text updates if no one else wants to claim that. Hopefully I won't lose interest halfway through. Timestamps will be done in local, PDT, time. These things usually take about 2 hours. Live video streams: Gamespot Nintendo 1Up GameTrailers Live text updates: (will be done in this thread as well) Joystiq Game Daily Manually written text updates, prepared with love and haste: [10:41 AM] Reggie stresses the importance of feeling over seeing, ends show. [10:33 AM] Back to Reggie. Miyamoto will announce the lucky person who gets to play the Wii on stage (there was a sweepstake held together with AOL). Miyamoto shows how to play the tennis game from Wii Sports. Reggie and Iwata will play against Miyamoto and "Scott". Reggie fails to serve. Miyamoto wins in the end too. [10:31 AM] Wii Sports will be a launch title and include tennis, golf and baseball. [10:28 AM] He goes on to speak of how Wii will be able to load up very quickly, just a few seconds to load a VC game. Wii will also never turn off, still providing services when it appears to be shut down. They call this "Wii Connect 24" and it will use the same power as a miniature light-bulb. He goes to give examples of how this impacts games by showing a slide with Animal Crossing character and mentions how they will be able to communicate with your friends over the internet even when switched "off". [10:23 AM] Nintendo president Satoru Iwata takes the stage! Talks about targeting a new consumer group, just like last year. Yawn. Keeps pressing Nintendo's "disruptive entertainment"... Nintendogs, Brain Age, the standard stuff. [10:21 AM] DS promo video, with some Starfox footage along several new and a few known titles. [10:18 AM] New DS games: Starfox DS, Yoshi's Island 2 and Diddy Kong Racing revealed. Also, more footage from the new version of Final Fantasy III. [10:14 AM] Enough Wii stuff, George Harrison comes on stage to talk about the DS. The DS has, during the 18 months it's been on the market, sold more than 16 million units. After that it's basically a recap on sales numbers for individual games and Wi-Fi connections and other marketing talk. [10:08 AM] Developers from Ubisoft France are now on-stage to show off Red Steel. You move by using the nunchuck and control the weapon by the remote. The graphics looks pretty great, reflections on the wet street and some cool lighting effects. Turning seemed a little slow, but I guess that's something the player can decide on. They then showed off "freeze-time"... ugh, but it's actually not so unoriginal. You can tag spots on the enemy and when time catches up, you fire on those locations. [10:05 AM] Time for some third party titles: Hyper Sonic, Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles, Madden, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, Rayman. It's just a quick run-through of the titles, no new footage shown. 27 different Wii games will be at E3, though Reggie won't specify a launch number. [10:03 AM] Metroid Prime 3: Corruption gets some more coverage. Nobody has time to think about that though, as Reggie moves along to reveal Super Mario Galaxy. Now it's time to show off three new franchises: Excite Truck (deforming terrain, hold remote as steering wheel), Project H.A.M.M.E.R. (which seems like a melee-based action game) and finally Disaster: Day of Crisis. [10:01 AM] Zelda demonstration ends. Game will be playable on show floor. Back to Reggie. [09:59 AM] Nunchuck has built in motion sensoring, also as has been rumored. Huge magnet and iron boot action in Zelda also demonstrated. Playing Zelda using the remote seems very fluid. There's no weird spinning around or getting stuck on walls. So far so good. [09:57 AM] As has been rumored, the remote has a small speaker that for example in Zelda gives of the sound of the bow-string and the sound of the arrow zipping forward. [09:56 AM] Time for some NoA guys to play Zelda using the Wii controller. They list of a bunch of controls. Gameplay shows Navi is circling around Link, only on Wii. As a note: Zelda looks fucking fantastic. They display sword use, bows and so on. [09:55 AM] Zelda: Twilight Princess will be alongside Wii during this fall's launch. What that means, I'm not sure. [09:52 AM] Ok promo time; Metroid Prime 3, Dragonball, Dragon Quest, Disaster, Fire Emblem, SpongeBob... some THQ racing game... FINALLY the new Mario, Super Mario Galaxy! After that it's a Gundam game, Tony Hawk, some samurai game, Necro-Nesia, Excite Truck, Elebits, Red Steel, Rayman 4 (looks cool), Super Swing Golf, Hyper Sonic... Lost track here... Madden, Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles (pre-rendered video shown, I'm presuming) and finally, again, Zelda: Twilight Princess. [09:50 AM] More fun for less money, but will not state a price at this time. The fourth quarter of 2006 however, will see the release of the console. Time to talk about the name, and the reasoning behind it. Bullshit market-speak about gamers coming together. "[Wii] is the sound of the future"! [09:49 AM] Reggie says "Wii" for the first time. [09:46 AM] Back to Reggie, gives short introduction to this years Wii presense. Says Nintendo will not reveal all at E3, deliberately. Talks about video gaming as an esoteric form of entertainment. [09:41 AM] A promo video for the Wii begins; tennis, golf, conducting and racing are shown. Also, new Mario on video? Seems so! Hudson's flight sim also displayed. Next game is Metroid, but I can't tell if this is old Gamecube footage or not. Something similiar to WarioWare, with tons of mini-games also shown. Now it's Red Steel time. Looks absolutely fantastic. After that Twilight Princess Wii functionality was displayed. Bows and arrows, swords and boomerangs, all were displayed. Fishing too... The end of the promo video shows the Wii logo and "2006". [09:39 AM] Reggie Fils-Aime offers a short introduction. Playing is believing. [09:38 AM] Different games are being shown by people playing on stage. Video seems prerecorded. [09:37 AM] We're starting. Miyamoto is conducting a virtual orchestra with a Wii controller! [09:30 AM] Ok, the time has come... to wait some more.

Ok, Nintendo's conference will start in about 20 minutes (as if they're gonna go live on time, ha!). Gamespot has the stream up now, so grab your spots. If a thread hasn't been created when there is 10 minutes left, I will start writing one and we'll go from there.

I don't think "penultimate" means what you think it means. Besides, there are many fantasy series that have a better story than Warcraft. Also, there is no such thing as watching too much LotR!

The thing about Sony's domination is that it's based on a cyclical argument. Why is the PS2 the best console to own this generation? The games. Thus begins the cycle. The games are created by developers. The developers develop for the PS2 because it has the largest userbase. Why does it have the largest userbase? Because developers create games for it, attracting customers that form the large potential consumer group for the future. If one of these things don't take off right away, Sony has no business. If there aren't any games they can't sell the console and if there aren't any consumers there isn't anyone there to buy the games. What Sony has done now damages the cycle slightly, allowing for Nintendo and Microsoft to snatch customers up. Sony wouldn't control the mass market if the cycle was sufficiently broken, which is something steps like this leads to. I've never typed cycle that many times before.

Not a thread about Nintendo, but rather Square-Enix games for Nintendo platforms! Right, this was announced just now by Square-Enix at their pre-E3 conference: Dragon Quest will be a Wii launch title, with the title Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors. Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers is coming to the Wii. Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates will be coming to the DS, with 4 player Wi-Fi support. I doubt there'll be more new revelations, but perhaps Nintendo might show some screenshots or even have something playable after their own conference.

The Xbox 360 certainly got a boost for me today, seeing as how there's now no possibility that I'll get a PS3. I'm guessing the same goes for a lot of other people who have been holding out, wanting to know price and further details on Sony's offering. With a price as high as that for the PS3, many will simply go for the "cheap but powerful" console, the 360. That's what I'm guessing anyway. A strong show from Microsoft would absolutely give them a further boost though. I agree with you about Nintendo's position however.

Gamespot and Nintendo will both be providing streams. It starts at 9:30 AM pacific, which is 6:30 PM CET. I'm guessing you'll be able to extract your local time from those. Gamespot even has a countdown if you're unsure.

Maybe Nintendo's big announcement is that they're suing Sony? That'd be neat...

Holy shit, Sony are much more pathetic than I though. Good job predicting the Nintendo rip-off, whoever it was who did that beforehand. Also, turns out the controller doesn't even have rumble technology. They say that it would interfere with the motion sensing... Of course that's not the truth, but it's even a terrible lie, since the implementation of the motion sensor is a weak knock-off in the first place. Great job reporting all this Ben. Do you have plans to do this with all the big conferences or is that open season to anyone who wants to do it?

You win this round Spaff! I fixed the first post to reflect my "owned" status... But yeah, great news for Nintendo. Dragon Quest will really help them move some units in Japan at launch, but I sort of doubt they were going to have trouble with as it were.

Hey, it's clearly Nintendo-related, since I didn't mention Final Fantasy XIII (bet you didn't see that one coming)! I guess someone can just change the thread title back tomorrow afternoon... Or create yet another fucking E3 thread

Maxis has an excellent track record, so I don't think we have any reason to believe that it'll be boring to play.

Good job on riding that gimmick so long, Mr. T... If that is your real name PS: It's going to be pathetic.

You don't think that maybe he choses that kind of interface himself, because he likes it that way, and that's why they are similar? Also, I'm pretty sure no one has forgotten about those games.

It's weird, I really want to know more about Huxley and I want to play Hellgate, but I never remember to bring them up in threads like these... Anyway, yeah, Huxley could be really great and I guess you pretty much know what you'll get from Hellgate: London.

The new Spore footage starts at 29:00, including some interview snippets with Will Wright. The game itself looks phenomenal all over, except for maybe how there's some minor popups, like trees and rocks, when he's hovering over a planet. I guess they're working on removing that though. Besides the looks, I just love how it sounds too, even over a video stream. Both the music and the effects are perfect for what we're seeing. That's a definite improvement over the first GDC video we saw, where the sound mix was sort of harsh and just didn't really seem all that good. Wright is also spot on with his assessment of what's wrong with massively multiplayer content and the single player approach to that which he's taken is great. I'm really looking forward to seeing how that works, in action.

Gothic urban with explosions is the new urban.

Those were all Mario Party games. Nintendo.com will broadcast it live and I think that's about it. Last year their site got crushed right away and wasn't really usable until the show was ending, so I hope they've improved their hosting and processing. Too bad about the coverage, but yeah, staying at home is the only sensible thing to do to get information quickly.