Misc. Info

E3: Another view....

Well folks, I know it's a bit late, (especially if you already have some of the print magazines in hand with their E3 reports [did it ever occur to you that there is no way possible for them to print magazines that have publishing deadlines 6 weeks before E3 that are "Show execlusives" without "cheating" and just publishing stuff they saw 6 weeks ago???]) but here's another view from an E3 attendee.

First, let me say that this was the first time I was privvy to attending an E3 event. Thankfully, because of reviews and such that I have published in the past, the organizers of the event were gracious enough to grant me press credentials.

As a first time attendee to such a show, let me just say it overwhelms the senses to actually attend such a show. The volume levels at the booths ranged from tolerable to deafening, depending on the corner of the expo floor you happened to be in. (Sony's being one of the noisiest!!). It seems as with other events like this (Federal Office Systems Exposition [FOSE], COMDEX, and other similar shows) each exhibitor is trying to outdo the others for your attention span, and as a result, eventually translate everything into more shelf space for their products at retail outlets everywhere.

This was a huge show, and anyone attending it would need to spend several days at the show to possibly try to take in everything, and even then, it's hard to imagine that they'd be able to see everything.

According to information at the opening press breakfast, this years show occupied space equivalent to 35 football fields (it filled both the Georgia Dome and Georgia World Congress Center, so it's not hard to imagine that it was that big), and based on personal observation, seemed to have a good sized city worth of attendees and exhibitors included in that space. (It was definitely hard not to be turning around and bumping into someone on the exhibit floor).

The exhibitors in the Georgia Dome included the makers of the Glove, a new peripheral designed for just about all major game playing systems (PC, Playstation, and Sega Saturn). The gadget has been written up in several game related print publications, and looks pretty good, but unfortunately demos weren't being allowed for the general public (including press attendees). (You had to settle for asking questions and watching employees of the exhibitor doing all of the demos). Still, the gadget looks to be pretty neat, and may be what the doctor ordered for extending game playing time without developing carpal tunnel syndrome. On the negative side is the tentative cost ($89, give or take).

Also exhibiting in the Dome was a company named Big Fun that is bringing a pure java game called Ronin out in the future. A playable preview is available at the companies web site: www.bigfun.net. What is so different about this is that the game is pure java, features multiplayer support, and is supported by its tie in with trading cards that will be sold similarly to baseball or football trading cards. The game itself involves taking a band of warriors that you buy when you start the game and then send out to try to conquer lands to add to your wealth and experience. As your wealth grows, you can use the extra funds to add to your party. You can also make allegiances with the other players to help protect yourself against attacks by still other players. The trading cards come into play as additional characters that can be added to your party. You scratch off an area on the card to open up a secret code that is then used to bring the character to life in the game. At that point (at least in the current version of things) you can buy the character to add to your party. The cards can be swapped with other game players that may need a character of the type you have stockpiled. Because of the scratch off area on the card, players can be sure that cards they are trading haven't been used up yet. This looks like an interesting endeavor, and could be one of the next games to make it big because of the internet, but the company is still working on the game itself, (currently it's noted to be 18.5% complete), and only time will tell if it can actually work.

One other notable exhibitor in the dome was a new company called Morning Star that is focusing primarily on the market for young girls (< 14 years of age) with software such as Kristi Yamaguchi's skating. This follows (to some extent) Mattel's Barbie mold, and allows persons using the software to make a "movie" of Kristi staking through a performance. The company actually featured a pre-show press conference where Kristi came out and skated a performance on an artificial ice surface in one of the ballrooms at the CNN center. The company seems to think they've found a market that can be tapped, but it remains to be seen if their gamble is going to pay off.

This leads back to the pre-show press conference which featured leading members of the Independent Software Dealers Association. Some interesting topics were discussed at that briefing, including the current state of the industry, markets that might need to be explored (including software for young girls and women in general), the future of multi-player gaming and whether it would prove to be profitable (also whether it would come to be the cause of too many traffic jams on the internet eventually leading to the death of the net and the genre) and also the prospects for the future of the industry (which no-one leading the press conference wanted to try to predict [actually the terms 'I'd be a fool to try to predict the future' were spoken a few times]) as well as prospects on the anti-piracy front and more. The answers were interesting to hear, but not very detailed, and unfortunately not everything was followed up or discussed in more details. One interesting area that was touched on in the original briefing, but not revisited, was the problems of gluts of software in certain markets (such as Sony Playstation software) or lack of software in others (like Nintendo 64 software).

There are several things to report in these areas though. First, for folks looking for Nintendo 64 software, we all knew that the lack of software wouldn't last. Though Nintendo is very tight with their licenses, the future does look good for them, with several titles scheduled for release in the near future, (Star Fox 64 is due out any day now). Of course it won't matter if the software isn't good, but Nintendo knows this better than just about anyone, and the quality of the titles that are coming is very high. Some notable Nintendo titles that were shown were Banjo Kazooie, WCW versus NWO wrestling (which was spotlighted by having several wrestlers from both organizations on hand to watch a demonstration match by Nintendo employees!), the upcoming Ken Griffey baseball game for the Nintendo 64, Quarterback Club 98, and much, much, more.

On the Sony front, there are several premiere titles coming out in the future, including the follow ups to Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider, as well as Captian Blasto, and new versions of their market leading sports titles (including impressive versions of Face Off, Game Day, and others like their forthcoming Major League Baseball game). As a side note, I did play most of these games, all of which were satisfying, though the baseball title didn't appear to be quite on par with Electronic Art's Triple Play '98 though. Of course this is only the tip of the iceberg though, as Sony continues to be the market leader in terms of quantities of software titles. (Ashame that doesn't equate to market leader in quality as well). As an example of the amount of software that Sony has out for the Playstation, one wall of their booth was covered with the front covers of the various games they have out. Of course it stretched for quite a bit to be able to include all of the titles (yes, even the ones that *suck*).

Sega had a presence at the show as well, and though it was a large area in terms of space occupied, it unfortunately wasn't that impressive in terms of items shown. Sega was able to show a lot of their own software, but unfortunately for them, third party titles were basically non-existent, both in their booth, and on the rest of the floor. Unfortunately for folks (like myself) that own Saturns, things aren't looking like they'll get much better any time in the future. Of course, this could change suddenly if Sega were to come out with some killer titles (of the type of revoluationary level of say Tomb Raider when it was originally released on the Play Station, or of the quality of a Mario 64 for instance [it's not like I'm asking for too much is it?]). Sega did have virtually all of their own titles there, including World Series '98 baseball, and it looks very sharp, but again doesn't seem to be enough to push many (if any) people into purchasing a Saturn.

Some of the bigger news in the console areas happened before the E3 show. In this case it was the price war that seems to be going on between all of the major vendors. Sony fired off the first blast, with Nintendo following quickly, and Sega finally deciding to join the others. Sony and Nintendo both seem like they'll be able to survive these battles pretty easily, but Sega may become a victim to the others if the third party titles don't start showing up.

For the Play Station and PC fronts, development by third party vendors looks to be good for some time to come. At booths like Capcom, Konami, Acclaim, Hasbro Interactive, Ascii (which had a great demo of Felony [reminescent of Death Race if you ever saw the movie, or Carmaggedon if you have seen the PC game]), Electronic Arts, and virtually every other booth there, versions of software for both the Play Station and PC were out in force.

Konami for instance was showing virtually all of their software as titles that will be on the Play Station, with a few ports shown of games that will soon be appearing on the PC side as well. (They were also able to show a few Nintendo 64 titles as well). Of course not all of the titles shown in the booth were playable, as some were still too early in the development phases to be able to play the game (such as Quarterback Club 98 which was shown at the Acclaim booth).

On the PC side of things, titles were every where, in virtually every category. Some looking very, very, cool, but all seemingly pointing to a new standard in the PC graphics area - 3Dfx. Though current software may not all support 3D video cards, and it seems like no standard has been currently set, the future seems to be 3Dfx all the way. At virtually every booth you walked up to, the PC software being shown was shown on a monitor that had a tag on it saying the video was being enhanced by 3Dfx.

I must say the results that were on display on the screens were darn impressive though, with beautiful scenery and impressive frame rates, all making the images we have come to expect pale in comparison to those that will be forthcoming. If you haven't started saving already, better get started on it, as somewhere down the road a 3Dfx card will be in your PC game playing future.

(For folks that own cards based on other products such as the seemingly impressive Rendetion Verite chip set, I can only repeat what one vendor said when I asked if their products would support that chip set -- "Rendetion sucks" [I was seriously considering buying such a card until I saw the amount of stuff coming that will be optimized for or down right require a 3Dfx card]).

Several products were on display for the multi-player environment, which seems to be the current hot market for most of the companies there (as if they finally woke up and realized that playing games in single player environments just wasn't as much fun). When asked at the opening press conference about what companies like Blizzard and others were doing and how it would affect the future of the market the hosts of the press conference could only speculate that it's an area that will continue to see growth, and of course as one company is able to show it as a winning proposition, the rest of the companies will follow suit.

This leads back to more good prospects for the PC market. While the software may be available for the Play Station market, the one thing the Play Station can't do is play over the internet (or at least can't do it as easily as can be done with games written for the Windows 95 market - titles such as Diablo and Quake already having set the example). This may become a big deciding factor for game purchasers that have several possible platforms to purchase for. As an example, in my home, there's one of each system - a Pentium based multi-media PC, a Play Station (bought and paid for before the system was even released [URNOTE]), a Sega Saturn (bought because of the quality of World Series baseball) and a Nintendo 64. The Saturn has basically been retired to my youngster's room (third grader), where it is occassionally turned on for him to play with. The Play Station still attracts my attention occassionally, but lately, has seen more of my son playing it then myself (been pretty busy at work lately, which also explains the tardiness of this article). The PC has captured virtually all of my spare time lately because of games like Diablo (which I openly admit to having been addicted to for over a two month time frame [I finally had to limit my game playing time for it to three nights a week, plus time on the weekend]), Quake, Duke Nukem 3D and more.

Because of the ability to play games in multi-player environments over the Internet (over a cheap connection via an Internet Service Provider), PC software is continuing to gather more of my interest at the expense of possible purchases in the Play Station market. Of course, if the software is of sufficient quality, it's probably gonna be purchased anyway, but when all things are equal, my purchasing decisions can be influenced by the availability of additional features in the PC versions. For instance, having seen the Frogger 3D game that was shown at E3, and hearing that a version would be fortcoming on the PC as well as the Play Station, my money may go towards the PC version given that it is supposed to feature support for multi-player mode over the internet. (Though the version that was being demoed was for the Play Station and it looked very nice! [it was a nice update to the original game, and is reported to even include the original game as a hidden bonus when it's released])

Some software seems that it will always be better in some way on the console systems, but most certainly the PC is getting ever closer to being an all in one system (something that folks like Andrew Grove from Intel [who gave a keynote address on day 2 of the E3 show] would like nothing better than to see!!).

To summarize, the future of the gaming industry, at least for the short term, looks very bright. On the large plus side, companies continue to battle for the gaming dollar, which has lead to cheaper prices and more features than ever for the products that they have released. The choices will be many, and the quality will continue to increase as some of the lesser titles lose shelf space to the better ones and the laws of supply and demand really come into play. Hopefully for you readers out there, you will find much luck in your state lotteries, as otherwise, you're most certain to not be able to save enough to buy all of the good stuff that is coming!

- Barry C. Dowell
bdowell@erols.com

The author of this article is an independent reviewer of software on all of the platforms mentioned here-in (PlayStation, Multimedia PC, Nintendo 64, and Sega Saturn). Reviews are written as software is available. In most cases reviews are written of software that has been purchased for personal use. If this is not the case, the circumstances of the origin of the software that is reviewed will be noted within the review (for instance if a pre-release version has been provided by the manufacturer, it will be clearly noted within the review). In any instance all reviews and articles are the personal opinion of the author, and regardless of whether software was purchased or provided by someone else, the reviews and opinions are all based entirely on the quality of the software. (If the software sucks, it sucks, no matter whether it was provided for free or not!).