Somehow, someone somewhere decided “E3 Media and Business Summit” was a better name for a conference about video games than “Electronic Entertainment Expo”. What used to be a great source of information about the gaming industry has been turned into more of a stodgy business event — a dangerous move in an industry that is driven by the new and greatest. Despite their worst efforts, a few newsworthy items came out during the press conferences of the big 3: Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony.

Microsoft struck first with a relatively impressive conference. They obviously showed off Gears of War 2, the only exclusive marquee game they have coming out in all of 2008. Without a doubt, Gears continues to impress and essentially justifies the purchase of the 360. Unfortunately, Microsoft is still the console that primarily appeals to gamers who want to shoot their friends and pretty much no one else — basically, the console for hard-core American gamers only. The online integration and breadth of FPS games for the 360 are superb but pretty limited in terms of variety of gameplay. I bought the 360 in Nov 2006 to play Gears and, as of last night, that’s still what I play with my friends. That’s not good for Microsoft.

Microsoft also announced an visual update to their console (*yawn*), integration with Netflix’s streaming service, and that FFXIII would be released in the US for the 360. The console update is mainly aesthetic with the addition of virtual avatars, as opposed to simple pictures. The avatars are basically Microsoft trying to capitalize on the popularity of the Mii avatars on the Nintendo Wii. This is inherently flawed as the same people who find those avatars neat are the casual gamers that have no interest in the 360. The existing 360 hard-core users are very unlikely to find any use for the avatars. The announcement of Final Fantasy XIII was a bit of a bombshell as Square Enix has typically avoided the Microsoft systems. It comes out first in Japan exclusively for the PS3 where the series is a monstrous success but is available for both 360 and PS3 in the US.

Most interesting for me is the Netflix integration. Netflix has recently been allowing subscribers to stream content to their computers for a portion of their online catalog. This is actually quite slick even though the quality is well below high-def. The 360 will gain the ability to stream those same videos with the caveat that you must be a XBox Live and Netflix subscriber. The XBox Live service is the selling point for the 360 but it has it’s own downside – a ridiculous $50/year fee. With the PS3 having online play for free, Microsoft has to be concerned about losing people and I can’t help but feel the Netflix integration is one attempt to justify their $50 fleecing of users. It also plays to the whole reason Microsoft is in the console arena: To get in peoples’ living rooms. As it is, movies are a more mainstream medium than games and a trojan horse for Microsoft to dominate the living room as they did the office. All in all, Microsoft had a pretty good showing though I don’t think they’re going to gain much traction in the market from their moves. The Netflix integration is great but it’s not enough of a selling point for the console — you can already do the same thing with other devices and seems more likely to just be a “nice to have” for people who already own the system. The FFXIII announcement was unexpected but it’s unlikely to sell any more 360s — if anything, it will reduce a few PS3 sales for people who would have bought the PS3 just for FFXIII. Anyone without a PS3 or 360 who is purchasing a console just to play FFXIII would be wiser to go with the PS3 version since it was the primary development platform for the game. Overall, the Microsoft announcements were impressive and the “best” of the bunch but not quite as impressive perhaps they were hoping for.

Nintendo gave their presentation this morning and, what has become all too common, managed to disappoint even their most rabid fans. Their conference was a complete flop with nothing of real interest being announced. No Zelda, no Mario, no upgraded online capabilities, no games for the typical gamer, nothing exciting announced for WiiWare, etc. However, they are releasing yet another peripheral, a music game, and Animal Crossing *sigh*. Nintendo built itself a gold mine with the Wii and it’s so disappointing to see it fail to take advantage of all the capabilities they have and instead keep pushing out “casual”-fare only. I love the way they have made gaming extremely accessible and casual but they’re making the same mistakes over and over again by ignoring the more typical video gamers. I suppose as long as they continue to mint money, they don’t have the incentive to change.

Sony gave their conference this afternoon and while it didn’t have quite the “wow” that Microsoft’s did, they had the most items of interest to me.  Sony used the upcoming game Little Big Planet to build their presentation – a definitive system selling game when it comes out this Fall. They are deploying their own video download service. They announced God of War 3, another huge exclusive though I’ve never played the series. MAG, an enormous 256 player online FPS with 8 player squads by the same people who did SOCOM, looks pretty intense. They showed off a bit of Resistance 2, a pretty solid game itself. The PSN continues to get a wealth of original IP and interesting games that the WiiWare and 360 lacks — WiiWare is great but the number of games available is extremely small and the 360 is primarily filled with lackluster arcade games and updated ports of old games.

For me, the Wii is great but Nintendo is really dropping the ball on the number of games that will appeal to a more traditional gamer.  In contrast, the 360 is great because I can hop on and any one of my friends will be on ready for me to kill in Gears or Call of Duty but doesn’t really offer much in the way of single player experience.  The PS3, on the other hand, has every 360 game that I care about with the exception of Gears as well as many other games that I can’t get elsewhere as well as the online capabilities of the 360 for free and a larger variety of games.  Sony definitely seems to have turned the corner after their terrible launch and the PS3 definitely seems to be coming into its own.