Introduction
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2001 is the North American game industry’s single most important event, a time when game publishers lay out their wares in readiness for the Fall and Christmas buying season. Walking around the show floor, you could be mistaken for thinking, “Economic downturn? What economic downturn?”
On game publisher Activision’s booth, there was a fully rigged skateboard pipe. Nintendo, and Sony didn’t have booths, more like office complexes. There was a giant Monster Truck parked outside the entrance to the LA Convetion Center. No expense was spared.
Then there’s the proverbial booth bunny syndrome: somewhere else you could have your picture taken with a scantily clad young lady dressed as a stripper-moonlighting-as-a-cop standing in front of a police car. In fact, you can pretty much categorize women working at E3 into two groups: booth bunnies, and everyone else with a clipboard, or folder (either working in marketing, or PR for a game company). It’s testosterone heaven, and if the assumption is that electronic entertainmnet is mainstream then, the mainstream needs some serious therapy.
Yup, E3 is a guy’s thing. So, sex, violence, and chest thumping marketing hype rules. This year was special in that regard, too. This was the year that Microsoft would be bring its unique brand of extreme chest thumping to the game industry – the Xbox. But, there was more to E3 then just Xbox.
E3 Announcements and Launches
Here is a list, filtered of course, of the announcements that rocked the gaming world at E3. Well, maybe rocked the gaming world is too strong, but someone at each of these companies spent a lot of money to get the word out, that’s for sure.
- Microsoft announced that Xbox would launcy on November 8, 2001 and retail for $299.99. Microsoft stated that it would ship 600-800,000 units at launch and plans on selling between 1.2 and 1.5 million units by year end. At launch, the company should have anywhere between 8 and 12 titles available. The heavy hitters for Microsoft are Halo, Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee, Project Gotham, NFL Fever 2002, and Amped. Three days before E3, Microsoft had scored a coup by announcing that EA was going to have 10 titles available for the Xbox, mostly from its EA Sports line-up, as well as The Simpsons: Road Rage, Medal of Honor, and Cel Damage.
- Nintendo retaliates by announcing that its GameCube will launch on November 5, 2001. It’s not until after E3 is over and done that Nintendo confirms that the GameCube will be priced at $199.95, and that launch titles will include Luigi’s Mansion, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II, and the ever so cute, Pikmin.
- Activision has the extreme and action sports franchises sewn up, and celebrates at E3 by having Tony Hawks, the real flesh version, demonstrating his moves on the booth. This is the best on-booth show put on by a non-woman. Activision also has Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which is either a sacrilegious sequel or a highly anticipated update, depending on your point of view.
- Capcom shows off its Resident Evil Code Veronica X, as well as Devil May Care, for the PS2. The titles are stunning to look at.
- Ubi Soft spans the spectrum of genres with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Disney’s Tarzan, and a Batman title for the PS2 based on Warner Bros. animated cartoon series.
E3 Announcements and Launches, Continued
- Infogrames got Unreal II, Master of Orion III, and Sid Meier’s Civilization III. The company’s also got Superman for the PS2 so, with Activision having acquired The Spiderman franchise, and Ubi Soft coming out with Batman, superheros are back in game fashion.
- About a year and a half ago, at the GAMEXecutive 2000 Conference in Monterey, California, Peter Moore of Sega and Bing Gordon of EA had a slightly heated exchange with, in a nutshell, Mr. Gordon dismissing Mr. Moore’s chances of success with the Dreamcast. Now, it seems that EA and Sega are headed for direct rivalry of a different kind, as Sega is now hardware agnostic, and going after EA’s crown as the world’s largest independent game publisher. It’s a tall order, but the stage is set, and although EA has a wealth of franchises in EA Sports, the Harry Potter franchise, Origin, Westwood, and Maxis, Sega may be the first company to seriously challenge EA at the top of the leader board. As a result, EA will probably not hold back on porting its titles to all the major platforms, whereas in the past, it had the clout to do a Dreamcast, and by holding back its support, doom a platform to oblivion.
- LucasArts has the sequel to its Jedi Knight, Star Wars Jedi Outcast Jedi Knight II slated for release on the PC, and showcases is Rogue Squadron II for the GameCube. The quality of graphics on the PC and console have reached the level where Rogue Squadron II, also known as Rogue Leader, makes you feel like you are in the final scene of the original Star Wars. Star Wars Racer II for PS2 isn’t bad to look at either.
- Britney Spears gets her own PS2 DVD which is one way to get dirty old men to buy the platform. You can change camera angles during Spears’ filmed concert. Apparently, this was the opportunity Britney was looking for to get into interactive entertainment. Hmmm.
- The Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA) beats the industry drum and claims that 60% of the US plays games, 43% of them women, and 35% of Americans think gaming is fun compared to 18% who think television is fun. Still, not even the IDSA can quite explain why every single game on the E3 show floor seems to be geared at adolescent males.
- While Microsoft and Sony vie to win the hearts and minds of E3 watchers for their broadband and online ambitions, Nintendo steadfastedly refuses to commit itself. One thing is for certain, each of the console vendors plans on offering some form of connectivity, but seeing as the console market has never proven an online business model, it seems a little premature to get too excited about all this.
- Nevertheless, Sony has singed up Macromedia, Real Networks, and most importantly, AOL as partners in its plan to keep Microsoft out of the living room. Sony plans to add hard drives, Ethernet and modem adapters, LCD displays, keyboard and mouse to the PS2 by the time Microsoft launches Xbox. We all know that the Xbox is basically a PC with a unified memory architecture (UMA) so, this should make for good press fodder in the coming months. Again, no one has managed to convincingly outline a strategy for turning consoles into a general purpose digital entertainment device, or Internet terminal.
- Last and least, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, The Weakest Link, and Survivor, all very bad, but successful television shows, are being turned into games.
Microsoft
I have a feeling that some day, the Xbox will be seen more as a triumph for Nvidia than Microsoft. To get the Xbox built, Microsoft pretty much set Nvidia up as the king of graphics components for the PC market. It doesn’t matter whether Microsoft sells one Xbox or one million, Nvidia’s domination of the graphics industry is now complete.
On the bright side, knowing Microsoft, they may very well have the most hackable game console in the short history of the industry. The Xbox is not so much a console, as a PC for the living room. It doesn’t boast a franchise brand, and the most stunning realization of its game power is Halo from Bungie. It’s bulky controller seems to suffer from input envy, but I believe that Microsoft is creating a smaller version after hearing complaints from the Japanese market. The Xbox is not a warm and fuzzy product like the GameCube, nor is it as slick as the PS2. It falls inbetween the two, and doesn’t really seem up to challenge Sony for world domination. But, who knows how much influence a $500 million marketing budget can have.
Yes, the Xbox is comparable in terms of graphics to the PlayStation 2, but so is Nintendo’s GameCube. All three were running, side by side, Madden Football on the EA booth, and frankly, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. In practice, if it came down to raw horsepower it would probably be Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, in that order, but you can derive as much pleasure from each depending on the content. In other words, if you are buying the platform for raw horsepower, you are using the wrong criterion.
When the Xbox launches in November, I’d be very surprised to see crowds lining up to be the first to own one of the 800,000 units that are destined for the launch, but I guess there is enough hype, and limited supply to warrant a rush of early buyers. That should help to keep Microsoft’s marketing pump primed for the remainder of the year, but Xbox isn’t really going to hit its stride until 2002.
The final SDK for Xbox only got to developers a few weeks before E3 so, it’s too early to judge the quality of Microsoft’s demos. Halo looks great. Munch’s Oddysee looks good, too. None of the titles showcased seemed like they would put Microsoft in Sony’s backyard in Japan so, I would reckon that the North American market is going to dominate Microsoft’s Xbox agenda for some time, and that leaves Japan and Europe on hold.
It won’t matter. Microsoft is in this game for the long run. Like most of Microsoft’s market entry products, the Xbox is a dive into the console pool, but it shouldn’t unseat Sony’s PlayStation 2, and I think that Nintendo can give Microsoft a hard time in the market, too.
Microsoft just hasn’t got the support of Japanese game developers, and although it is pouring money and resources into Japan, the company can’t be considered a world beater on the console stage without the backing of the major Japanese game companies.
However, Xbox systems will sell, and there is an audience for Xbox among PC enthusiasts, if nowhere else. I am willing to bet that the Xbox will also find a rabid fan base among people who like to perform software autopsies on their hardware, and who will generally enjoy this unique opportunity to get their hands on a console design that is already well documented and understood as a PC. Heck, if someone comes up with an Xbox emulator for the PC, I think we might be in for some strange ripples in the time-space continuum as the universe struggles with the inherent paradoxes.
Nintendo
If there was one standout product at this year’s E3 then, it has to be Game Boy Advance (GBA). Nintendo has such a dominance in the handheld game market that it is hard to imagine even Sony displacing the company with its rival PSOne handheld this coming holiday season. GBA is at roughly the same stage as the SuperNES in terms of game quality, but just happens to be something you can fit in your pocket. Sure, it’s aimed at kids, but if you travel a lot, it’s a much better option than pulling out the laptop on those long haul flights to play games. I was personally waxing nostalgic about Namco Museum, a line-up of classic arcade games from the seventies and eighties, for the GBA, including Pac Man. And if that doesn’t convince you, then there’s Super Mario Advance which clinches the deal for me.
On the other hand, the Nintendo GameCube isn’t a bad product at all. It gets a bad rap for not being as much of a graphics heavyweight as the Xbox or PS2, but I think that’s unfair, and misses the point. Nintendo has some great franchises – Mario, Zelda, StarFox, and Donkey Kong – all of whom are going to make their way onto the GameCube. Luigi’s Mansion, Mario’s brother gets a starring role for once, looks like it could be as entertaining and compelling as the Super Mario 64 was when the N64 launched. Nintendo has also drastically revamped its licensing and cost structure, and although the GameCube supports its own proprietary DVD format, it still means that developers for Nintendo are not going to face the high barriers to entry that Nintendo cartridges have placed on them in the past. That should translate in greater and better third party support for the GameCube. It also means that Nintendo games will also come in under $50, which should help.
If you have kids, and don’t really plan on giving up your living room television to a PS2 or Xbox then, you have to have a GameCube on your shopping list. The GameCube also allows up to four GBAs to connect to it as controllers. The GBAs are supposed to allow game developers to allow players to swap characters and scores from the GameCube with GBA titles. Think Pokemon. It’s a great angle, and unique to Nintendo. If everyone who owns a Game Boy, or who will own a GBA, goes out and gets a GameCube too then, Nintendo will be happy.
At the end of the day, Nintendo is fun. It doesn’t take games as seriously as its rivals, meaning that it doesn’t have the range of genres either. Nintendo franchises are familiar, and they have aged well. The GameCube isn’t going to compete with PS2 and Xbox head on, but on its own, it’s a pretty good product.
Sony
Let’s see, if you want lots of titles to choose from, great graphics, established franchises, and brands, and backward compatibility to your library of pirated PlayStation One titles, you would be a fool not to buy a PS2.
If that isn’t convincing enough then, here are some more reasons to go Sony:
- Metal Gear Solid 2 – Very cool. Microsoft doesn’t have anything to compete with this.
- Final Fantasy X – Console game as art. Not everyone’s gameplay cup of tea, but you have to admire the reach of the designers.
- Grand Theft Auto 3 and Twisted Metal Black – Cars and destruction – all good.
- Batman – I like the cartoon series on television so, sue me.
Gaming is highly subjective so, I don’t expect anyone to agree with me when it comes to titles, but Sony has a lock on the development community, it’s rolling out PS2 units at such a rate that it will be years ahead of its competitors in shipments, and if Sony decides to drop the price of the PS2 to $249 by the time Xbox launches, or even as low as $199 by Christmas 2001, as rumor has it, it can crush all opposition.
Having said that, I don’t know if Sony will drop prices because, it probably won’t have to, but if Sony has to go down to $199 this year, it can. In addition, developers are getting the hang of the PS2 graphics artchitecture so, Microsoft’s arguments about the ease of developing for Xbox versus PS2 are probably less of an issue than the hype suggests. That leaves Sony unassailable. I just don’t buy into the Xbox hype, I’m afraid.
PC Gaming
The upshot of all the attention focused on console games is that the PC is turning into a schizo platform. On the one hand, almost all educational and edutainment content is going to appear either on a PC or Mac, and on the other hand, PC games are getting more adult, darker, and probably, more insular. Blizzard Entertainment has produced some of the best PC games around, and they were previewing Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, slated for a December 2001 release. Great stuff. You almost feel like you have a camera on a crane and can swoop through valleys and woods as the action unfolds. It’s a game that only works well on a PC, but it also has complexities and nuances that only a true fan can appreciate. Couldn’t you say that about almost all the best PC games?
Presently, the PC gaming universe is steering more and more towards complex immersive worlds, multiplayer gaming, and more and more role playing and adventure games. Basically, the kind of games that need all the power of a PC to push the envelope. If first person shooters and onlinge gaming find a home on the next generation cosoles, the PC is going to have skew towards older gamers, but I have yet to find any meaningful research that quantifies and isolates the demographics of gamers after they hit their mid-twenties.
PC Gaming, Continued
The changes that are going to take place in the PC gaming world has nothing to do with the demands of the PC gaming audience, either. Developers are going to have to go where the development dollars are, and with three very powerful consoles on the market, each with broadband connections, and high quality 3D graphics, and a dedicated audience that can reach 70-100 million users worldwide, PC gaming is going to become an increasingly niche market.
This year’s E3 was so dominated by consoles that the PC game industry got lost in the shuffle. It’s still there, but all the traffic is going the consoles’ way. Furthermore, despite the interest that Microsoft has generated for the industry, outside of the traditional tech and game press, two thirds of titles fail on the open market. The market is driven by a handful of hits. The demographics are still 8-14 for Nintendo, mostly male; 12-18 for Sony, mostly male; same for Xbox.
In the film world, you may have similar dynamics, with a handful of expensive blockbusters driving most of the business, but the demographics are much broader. And, there are so many alternative creative channels for content – video rentals, DVD, television, international rights and so forth. Games kind of die and wither on the vine if they don’t get picked off the shelf.
Conclusion
The game industry is on the upswing, but it’s the turn of the consoles. The technology is good enough to make comparisons to the PC meaningless, and we now have Microsoft acting as believer. Yet, consoles remain pure game platforms. You could have a lot of fun on a PS2, a GBA, a GameCube, or an Xbox. Will the new generation of consoles change your living room? I don’t think so. It’s still games for boys, and the living room is home to a much broader demographic. Does it matter? Nope. I am getting me one of each, and setting myself up somewhere in the house, out of the way of everyone else. Will I head to the store tomorrow? I’m cheap; prices are going to come down pretty quickly and sharply once all three are shipping in sufficient quantities. But, that’s just me, November is going to be a feeding frenzy in some stores, that’s for sure.
