E3 2010 Megapost!

The dust has settled, and we can finally judge this year’s E3 with a cool head and clear vision.  It’s time to see whose checks were cached at the bank of accurate prediction, and whose checks bounced against the negative balance of erroneous guesses.  First up: did the 3DS possess additional amazing features beyond the addition of lenticular stereoscopic display?

Somehow I don’t think Sean was referring to the analog slider, triple camera setup, or tilt sensors.  No, none of these are the amazing hidden feature that the early announcement of the 3D display could have mislead their competition about.  They are interesting, but the stereoscopy remains the star of the show.  (It would have made more sense to announce the analog control or tilt sensor first, if they wanted to distract somebody!)  The Virtual Boy 2 is nothing more than what meets the eye.  Glad to have that settled.

Now let’s move on to reactions.  There sure were some funny animated gifs floating around showing how the Kinect demonstrations were all canned footage and actors miming along!  But speaking as someone who has been involved in some large-scale presentations before, I can tell you that the less room for error the better.  Especially with today’s modern journalist crowd.  Recall the tumultuous reveal of the latest iPhone?

Ouch.  After witnessing that, who would be stupid enough to test something like Kinect (a visible light based technology) on stages where overpowering flood lights and press flashbulbs would be sure to ruin everything?  Who would want to reenact Steve Jobs’ pleas for the audience to reduce their radiation pollution?  Oh wait.

This is why you prerecord your demonstrations.  This kind of hubris always has humiliation and humility following swiftly in its wake.  And take another look at what they were trying to show us!

Let’s see.  Every used button of the controller on-screen, glowing labels for these glowing buttons, and a silhouette of the controller with arrows and a command to “swing sword”.  It’s like they took every complaint I’ve made about Wii game interface design, and doubled it!  Nice gigantic enemy scorpion, by the way.  This is an absolute trainwreck.  Even Twilight Princess’ HUD didn’t look nearly this gaudy.

Look at that, symbols instead of words!  An implied controller instead of a direct outline!  They’ve actually managed to make this poor interface look like an accomplishment!  Where have the days of discoverable interface design gone?  Why do Wii games need to constantly “mode shift” instead of basing their interactions off a consistent gestural model?  Adventure games did this years ago!  And how can anyone compare this game’s sword fighting to Wii Sports Resort after seeing the enormous delay between swings and canned animation?

He doesn’t even move until the controller stops!  They’ve learned nothing from WSR swordfighting!  Why hasn’t anyone made a clever looping gif of this discovery?  Let’s remedy that.

Link’s swings are as far behind as the Kinect footage was ahead! Poor Link.  He was so embarrassed that he jumped off a cliff.

Now let’s get back to the 3DS.  Nintendo is pursuing a sustaining innovation strategy with the 3DS by emphasizing better graphics and display, while ignoring the expanded market.  Just as Sony and Microsoft’s previous strategy was to bring PC gaming to the consoles, the 3DS is merely taking modern 3D console gaming and crudely porting it to the handheld market, with the questionable benefit of replaying classic PS2 franchises in stereoscopic 3D (MGS, Splinter Cell, Resident Evil).  Of the eight titles Nintendo announced for the 3DS, a paltry three of them were expanded audience games.  And the third-party games don’t shake out much better either.  It’s a PSP in 3D.

The 3DS is not disrupting console stereoscopic gaming.  The colloquial definition of disruption is “crappy products for crappy customers” and the 3DS fails at both of these in relation to current console stereoscopic gaming.  The lack of glasses is an improvement on current shutterglasses tech.  The smaller screen size is irrelevant due to the fact that the sole advantage of large screens is shared viewing, which the glasses requirement already ruined.  And the 3DS is not for “crappy customers” as evidenced by the largely hardcore game catalog currently announced for it.

Will 3DS purchasers be content with a 3D handheld and 2D console?  Will a 3DS purchase mean that the customer is satiated and will not crave a way to recreate this personal portable experience in a way more suitable to the local/communal gaming phenomenon the Wii has engendered in the expanded market?  These are not the seeds of disruption at all.  Nintendo has ceased to be the disruptor.  They have settled down as the incumbent.

Where is the Vitality Sensor?  Where is even one piece of software for it?  Nothing signals Nintendo’s abandonment of the expanded audience like this unfulfilled promise.  A blue ocean spread out before them, and they turn their boat ’round towards the reddening bay of stereoscopy!  The most that the expanded audience has to look forward to right now is Wii Party.  Amazingly, that game looks almost like Nintendo copying the style of the Wii’s own “birdmen casual” shovelware titles!  As for Kirby and Kong, “Kirby is just LOL” and Kong is “inferior to the Super Mario Brothers line” which doesn’t bode well for either title.  If people like Sean Malstrom found Yoshi’s Island “saccharine art style” to be so “controversial”, how will yarn outlines succeed in the west where crayons didn’t?  Not that Sean saw anything like this coming (see this response to the possibility of a new Donkey Kong Country)

Quote:

No, I don’t think there will be more games like Mario 5. Nintendo realizes that people are attracted to NSMB and NSMB Wii not because they are 2d but because they are accessible and is easier to experience such gameplay.

Nintendo might put out more such games but they will be on WiiWare like ExciteBike: World Rally.

That stuff just cracks me up.

But the most disturbing revelation is the 3DS’ unusual and unprecedented behavior towards internet connectivity.  Previous DS and DSi handhelds always required the user to specify what networks to connect to, and when or if to download firmware updates (the latter here applies only to the DSi and DSXL).  The first announcement was that the 3DS would no longer use the industry standard “pull” model for firmware updates, as the DSi, Wii, iPhone and other devices use.  Instead they plan to adopt a “push” model, where Nintendo decides when you will update your console.  This “pushy” behavior doesn’t stop there, though.  You don’t even have the option to choose to not upgrade, because the 3DS automatically seeks out unsecured wireless networks, and downloads updates automatically!  The upsetting fact that Nintendo has wrest physical control of the device from your hands is compounded by their freeloading decision to automatically wifi wardrive their way back to central command.  Instead of footing the bill for a Kindle-esque cell-tower based whispernet, or even setting up a pay service, they’ve offloaded the cost to unsuspecting linksys router owners who never bothered to set a password.  To prevent pirates from stealing their licensees’ games, they will turn every single user into a pirate of wireless internet!

But what of Microsoft?  Microsoft has made a disastrous mistake with Kinect.  They had the advantage of bearing no cliche stance towards the expanded market.  Kinect could have been anything to anyone.  But they have chosen to imitate the unfortunate stereotypes that the interminable shovelware production houses have had such horrific success with.  Those games succeed through ridiculously low initial investments recouped through mistaken purchases.  With the enormous budget behind Kinect they should have centered upon creating a distinct style independent of “casual games” copy-of-a-copy glossy white reflections.  There are more ways to be family-friendly than nonthreatening sports games!  For one thing, they could have brought back edutainment, and shamed wii-owning parents whose children learn nothing from their games but muscle memory.  Imagine the look on Nintendo execs’ faces as they realize parents care about more than their children’s chances of becoming obese!  Do you remember the intense physicality of the final rounds of TV’s “Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego”?  Or the mythology lessons with obstacle courses of “Legends of the Hidden Temple”?  This is a proven formula, lost to the ages.  And yet this is but one of a million different directions they could have taken Kinect, instead of boorishly playing simon says with Nintendo.

And regarding Sony?  While Microsoft copied the software of Nintendo through their original hardware, Sony has copied their hardware while changing their software plans very little.  They’ve even made plans to patch games that are already on the market to support some form of input from the Move wands.  Sony has shown much less interest in creating games with subject matter outside of their established comfort zone.  They appear to be banking on the larger market being enticed to their console by the newly familiar control scheme.  I still maintain that there is a middle ground between off-putting “mature” subject matter of the hardcore games and the sunshine and lollipops “immature” subject matter of the perceived casual market.  This is, after all, where many beloved Adventure Games reside.  Why does this genre flourish in Europe and languish in the States?  When did Americans grow weary of adventure? But Sony does have an opportunity with the combination of three-dimensional display and three-dimensional inputs.  Imagine game mechanics that challenged a player on their ability to manipulate the locations of objects in real 3D space, and accurately interpret the depth cues provided by the stereoscopic display?  Realize that first-person shooters were the result of the limitations of using a 2D projection display for 3D games.  The point-and-shoot mechanic is an easily understood concept for displays that can only suggest depth through parallax.  More complex interaction would be impossible due to either limitations in input or output of the 3D simulation.  (Think of the disaster of Trespasser‘s virtual arm control)  Similarly 2D games often emphasized simple bullet-based interactions on a single plane.  Even the modern FPS is a simple reversal of pong.  In pong you want the bullet to hit you, and pass by your opponent.  In the FPS, you want the bullet to hit your opponent, and pass by you.  With both input and output finally passing the limitations of the second dimension, we should at long last arrive at some improvement in the design of collision-detection games.  As much as I would hope for improvements in more important areas (such as better synthesis of interaction design and narrative themes), the potential for genuinely new mechanical developments is not something to be ignored.  Sadly, I doubt developers will rise to the challenge given the high barrier to entry for players, which results in a smaller audience for anything so ambitious.  Stereoscopic home displays can never succeed unless the glasses can be as cheap and disposable as the polarized plastic lenses of the theaters.  Given time, this will most assuredly happen.  Given the exponential advances in the advances of technology, it will happen sooner.  Just how much sooner is anyone’s guess.

In summary: nobody “won” E3.  All three of the big three made poor decisions that kept them from achieving their full potential.  Let’s wrap this up with a few more fun gifs.

Well now!  Haha, oh my.  That’s priceless.

I love it!