Yesterday I was going to post two seperate responses to Nintendo and Sony respectively. But after some internal deliberation, I found both addresses to be lacking. So much so that they don't deserve individual posts. As I said previously I don't pay much attention to the figures that are stated, they've never really impressed or surprised me.
What did surprise me was the lack of innovation from both companies. As Nintendo and Sony are both veterans that have, in the past, proved themselves by releasing/showing various new hardware and software which have had serious impacts on the industry. Instead what was delivered was statistic after statistic. As both companies had to have realized the at the end of the day previous, that they just brought their knife to a gun fight.
So in light of their lack of commitment to e3; I feel competent that I can summarize both Sony and Nintendo's keynotes each in a first-person perspective:
Sony: "Okay we f*^&ed up. We know we f*^&ed up. But we're going to make it better by cutting prices; mainly because we can't compete. So please, come back. We've got a new SOCOM game, God of War III, and.....well....please, come back."
Nintendo: "We'd like to show you forty-two other things we can do with wiimotes. None of which relate anything to Mario, Zelda, Kid Icarus or the many other licenses that we've got locked away in a vault and aren't going to do a damn thing with. Sure we've got new games in the pipeline, I don't know what they are, but if I find Shigeru; he can go through them in great detail. Shiggy? Shiggy? Has anyone seen a creative little Japanese guy around here somewhere? Seriously, this isn't funny anymore!?!"
Two companies who have both at one time or another dominated the games industry; have now become the underdogs. And only time will tell if MS can learn a thing or two from history. Mainly, that this is one market where you can never rest on your laurels.
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