Monday, June 10, 2013

E3 According to Everything But E3

There are two kinds of gamers on the internet: Those who pay close attention to every E3 update in real time, and those who make no effort to pay attention to anything but get all the same news within an hour of each event because it’s all over their Tumblr dashboard. I've been up for 19 hours and forgot E3 even started today, so it's no surprise I'm in the later group.

But I may shift gears and watched archived press conferences over the next few days, because it sounds like this is the biggest train wreck of an E3 ever, and it's still Day 0. The "Big Brother Is Watching You" XBOX ONE just got announced to the tune of 500$, no apologies or explanations for the privacy invasion given. Meanwhile, Microsoft is releasing an XBOX 360 game called Watch Dogs about trying to take down a corrupt system.

I'm not kidding.

Seeing how this blew analysis guesses to the tune of 350-450$ out of the water, who knows how much Sony thinks they're getting for the PS4 in a horrible economy. I won't be surprised if they're so out of touch with reality that they have an even higher asking price than Microsoft.

What really gets me thought is how Nintendo seems to be winning by not doing anything. In fact, this has been 2013 so far - Sony and Microsoft keep digging deeper holes while Nintendo keeps selling more copies of Luigi's Mansion and Animal Crossing while they bring down the price on the Wii U to something a bit more reasonable. It is the most backwards thing I have ever seen - a console war is being won by the company who is being the least proactive. That's just not how technology works. The spoilers always go to whoever announces all the newest, highest quality toys with the most bells as whistles at the latest date. But Sony and Microsoft are both madly in love with ending the used game market in the middle of a recession that they are totally blind to how much trouble they're about to be in.

So my prediction?  Once we see the sales on the XBOX ONE and the PS4, the Wii U is suddenly going to look really successful in comparison. Analysts have said the console is doing poorly, but we haven't really had a control for how many consoles sell in hard economic times on average. If the Wii U doesn't come out on top, I may lose some of my faith in humanity because really? Consumers are really going to let Sony get away with killing used games and let Microsoft get away with a laundry list of privacy exploits that are downright scary?

Yeah, no. I want to believe the gaming community is smarter than that. At least the members of the community who buy their own stuff, at least. Personally, I'm not shelling out 60 hours of ghostwriting to pay for either of these bricks.

I'm going to bed. Wake me up if they announce Half-Life 3. (Read: Don't wake me up.)

Awesome Link of the Day: What Are the Craziest Gaming Accessories?

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