There are no news items in this podcast. Instead, it’s just post-E3 discussion. Everything is E3. What the crew liked, what the crew didn’t, and T.J.’s reports from doing the show floor. The episode is almost 2 hours long, so there was a lot to talk about.
Episode 541: E3 Reaction 2019
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Call of Duty: World at War – October Open Beta!Call of Duty: World at War – October Open Beta!
If you’ve got Microsoft Windows or an Xbox 360 you’ll be eligible for the public beta of Call of Duty: World at War by Activision. Although the game is set to deploy on the 11th of November, many of us will be able to get a taste of the multi-player action early by entering into the beta.
Activision has always been great about getting stable multiplayer beta’s for their Call of Duty series, hopefully this turns out to be as awesome. ” These betas will serve as an early chance for players to practice the tactics needed for survival in the intense chaos of Call of Duty: World at War’s Pacific and European theaters,” says their press release (below) and we’re ready to take on the challenge of “bug finding.”
Okay, in all honesty, most beta’s I’ve entered on my Xbox 360 have just been to get some free gaming in early and be able to feel cool about getting into the action before everyone else. In return, Activision gets some server stress testing and early feedback (if I’m so inclined to yell).
All-in-all, great news from the Activision crew.
Microsoft Avatar’s and DashboardMicrosoft Avatar’s and Dashboard
Microsoft has come out and validated some earlier rumors about Xbox 360 Avatar’s and their 3D dashboard design. Apparently, this is to build more of a community and bring a bit of the Mii-like influence from the Nintendo Wii to the 360 hardware.
It seems Microsoft is taking some of the concepts from the Nintendo Wii which were poorly implemented due to the lack of any real network community and bring them to live with a more integrated useful system. This proves Nintendo was on the right track but shows off their lack of integration and fear of bringing people together.
“Create, share, and have fun with all of your friends… but avatars are just the beginning. The new Xbox is tailored for the living room. Here we are at the community channel — instead of a list of friends, you actually see them.” (joystiq)
Nintendo’s cute little idea of Mii’s and sharing them with friends was fantastic, a great bullet list feature, but rather useless. Typing in friends codes gets old way too fast and there really isn’t anyway to vocally chat with people on your friends list anyway, so who cares?
Microsoft has proven to know a bit about the community space, has parental controls and a fairly reliable LIVE system for making it all happen. Although Nintendo should look at this with a bit of pride, given duplication is the best form of flattery, they could learn a few things about how to work a community into your console too!
Sony’s E3 Conference: Fairly ImpressiveSony’s E3 Conference: Fairly Impressive
We’re all used to Sony falling on their face at E3 in the last few years, but, this year, things were different. They’re information was delivered well, they had a great presentation medium using Little Big Planet‘s game engine as a presentation platform over the standard PowerPoint slides and everything went smoothly.
The format for displaying their facts, figures and sales numbers was well played. Nobody wants to sit in front of a chart and listen to an executive blab on about what they did and where they’re going. But, when you add some Little Big Planet flair, such as having the graphs built within their game engine and Sack Boy hopping around on the statistics things smooth over well.
I was confused on why they chose to display the Little Big Planet graphic engine followed by Resistance 2 and then taper into talk about the PlayStation 2 with game previews. It seems more appropriate to bring in the PlayStation 2 product line first, then blow the crowd away with the current generation graphics. Instead, we were awed by the epic Resistance 2 graphics and then presented with old generation stale game engines… silly.
They went on to show off the wide array of PSP games arriving and a little trailer for Resistance Retribution for the PSP. The game system is definitely more mature than their DS competitor but seems to have a bit less sales momentum.
Overall, Sony did one right by talking about their three tiered solution to gaming instead of focusing too much on a single system. PlayStation 3 numbers are good but not mind boggling (like Wii) and their PSP product is doing much better than it used to and the PlayStation 2 numbers are high but falling compared to last year (as would be expected).
By focusing on the full suite of products they’ve put their eggs into many baskets rather than rely on their bleeding edge flagship product which still needs time to grow.
Well done Sony.